North
by princesswingnut
Summary: In which Embry Call does the following: falls in love, falls out of a moving car, blows off an essay, goes ice fishing, and finally, FINALLY finds out exactly who his real father is. All basically at the same time. EMBRY FIC. Compass Points series.
1. Chapter 1

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Third compass point :). The usual notes before I jump into this—since I am me, you can pretty much bet there will be canon inconsistencies sprinkled throughout. Sorry. Sometimes I get carried away. Feel free to nail me on 'em when you find them. Also, ideas are always welcome, especially in relation to my next installment—got any underwritten characters you're in love with? Drop me a line. I love those guys. And oh, feedback. It is loved. It is loved so very much. That is all.

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They say the only things in life you can't get away from are death and taxes. Well, I can. I can get away from them.

The death part is easy. I'm a werewolf. Due to various Mystical Quileute Things that we still haven't entirely figured out, as long as we're changing to wolves regularly, we don't age. It's like vitamins, or something. I can live forever if I want.

For the record, I don't want.

Taxes—now that's a little more complicated—try to keep up. I live on a Native American reservation, and since reservations are technically sovereign lands, well…no taxes. Pretty neat, huh? I'm sure I'll appreciate it when I'm thirty.

So, death, taxes, no big deal. I can get away from those. The only thing I can't get away from is Jill Keyes.

You see, dating is difficult when you're a werewolf. How are you supposed to take a girl to Olive Garden and a James Bond movie when all you can think of is that your true love could walk by you any moment, and then ZAP. Try explaining _that _one to your date. Because that girl, imprint girl, surprise true love girl—she could be _anywhere_. She could be at Olive Garden. She could sit down across from you on the bus. It's like a time bomb, really, that's what it is.

Obviously, I couldn't explain that to Jill, though ("I'm sorry, Jill, the reason I can't date you is because I occasionally turn into a wolf the size of a horse. Maybe we can still be friends?"). Not that I'm heartbroken or anything, because she wears kind of a lot of eyeliner. And fake fingernails. I don't know what it is about fake fingernails, but I think all guys are secretly afraid of them. We won't admit it, but we are. They're like _claws. _Witch claws.

I don't know what the legal definition of stalking is. I've thought about looking it up a couple of times, along with the definitions for harassment and restraining orders, but I haven't gotten around to it. Anyway, if I filed for a restraining order, I would basically never hear the end of it from my friends. _They _didn't have to worry about this kind of thing—most of _them _were already locked into their biologically mandated epic romances. They didn't _understand._

See, I was pretty sure that showing up at my work every day and drinking coffee until closing time, staring at me from her corner booth, might be considered stalking. It was definitely _creepy_, whatever else it was. I always tried to pretend I didn't notice, but that usually only lasted an hour or two before I started twitching a little under her gaze. Nobody can stand being _watched _for that long—probably not even models or celebrities.

Because I was 6'3 and she was 5'5, though, because I had shoulders that could hardly make it through a doorway and she was little, slight, female, there was no way my boss was buying my harassment theory. That meant I had to go over there every time her coffee mug went empty—and let me tell you, that girl could _drink _coffee—I had to go over there and fill it back up. And try to keep the terrified expression off my face, because she could probably smell fear. I really wouldn't put it past her.

"_Embry,_" she said, in that special voice she reserved only for me. Quil could mimic it perfectly.

I tell you, this had better not be what love is _really _like, because if it is, then love is creepy. "Hi. How are you?"

"I am—just great," I lied. "I am so good. Coffee?" Take the coffee, just take it, get me out of here.

"I am so glad to hear that," she said, both hands still wrapped around her mug. _She _knew what I was here for, and to her it was leverage. "So what are your plans for the weekend?"

"Um—my mom and I are going to…Seattle," I invented wholesale. Anything to get me off her radar for the next two days. "She wants to—get a dress?"

"Sounds like a great plan," Jill said, though I could see her mouth turning down at the thought of me leaving. There went her sitting-in-a-coffeeshop-all-day plans for the weekend. I guess there wasn't a lot to do in La Push. I mean, we didn't have a bowling alley or anything. "When are you getting back?"

_Just give me your mug! _I yelled silently. "I don't know. Never."

"Never?"

Oops. I grabbed her mug from her hands while she was distracted, sliding it across the table and filling it quickly, expertly to the brim. "Well, have a nice day!" I said brightly, and got the hell out of there.

I made it to the safe harbor of another table, my back turned to Jill, and focused on another customer, for once—a sharp-boned man with separated black hair, like he'd just run a hand through it. A crescent scar that ran through his eyebrow and down into his jaw, feather-white and eye-catching, visible. I'd never seen the man before, but he was a customer and he wasn't Jill, so I filled his mug and smiled.

"That girl over there," he said, nodding to the corner booth. His voice sounded strange--overtense. He didn't look me in the eye. "She's got a crush on you."

"Yes she does," I confirmed grimly. "Any chance you want to take her with you when you go?"

"Sorry," he said sadly, brooding into his coffee cup. What was _up _with this guy? Even by the standards of the weirdos that we usually got passing through, this was a new high. "I've got no room for anyone else in my life. I wish I did, but I don't."

"I'm—sorry to hear that," I said diplomatically, already backing away. I only had fifteen minutes left on my shift—Sue could deal with this guy, she was better with the nut jobs anyway. "Enjoy your coffee. You can let Sue Clearwater know if you need anything else, she's right behind the counter."

"Hey," he said when I was already halfway gone, making me turn and look at him. Then when I did, he was just _looking _at me—mouth half-open like he was trying to spit something out, but couldn't quite do it. He wasn't looking at me the way Jill did, but with a narrowed intent—like he was trying to see all the way through me to my bones. I got goosebumps on my arms, and I brought a hand up to rub them away. "Thanks for the coffee, kid."

"Anytime," I said uneasily, and retreated. I'd been doing a lot of that today. In fact, I guess I did a lot of that in general.

I mean, there was a certain amount of bite-first-ask-questions-later that came with being a guy who turned into a wolf, a certain ability to spar and scrap, but sometimes—I don't know. I always seemed to be the last one pouncing, the one too distracted to hear the starting gun. When I ran with the pack I was always near the back, and I couldn't get my grades above straight B's. There was a hesitancy in me that I hated, couldn't get rid of, that last wavering second of indecision before the plunge. I wished I could be sure about things the way that everyone else always seemed to be sure. I was a poorly-stitched rag doll, I was a dotted outline of a person. I was never whole—and I knew why.

But what did any of that have to do with coffee? Nothing, that's what, absolutely nothing. I guess it was just the way the guy looked at me that jarred me a little—it was a weird moment. I shook myself and got back to the counter, sliding my empty coffeepot across the table so that Sue could trade me for another one. Eight months of me working here and we had this down to an art, the perfect timing of slide-grab-slide-go, and my hand was stretched for the full pot she would slide over. Except she never did.

I looked up at her in surprise, and she was standing there with the pot still in her hand, staring fish-eyed over my shoulder. Staring like she'd a ghost or a date palm or her old college boyfriend; something she'd never expected to see ever ever again. And she was staring at the table where the man had been sitting.

I whipped around to look, in case he'd suddenly grown another head or something and I'd missed it, but the man was gone. His mug was turned neatly over on a napkin, empty, and his chair was pushed in. Two coffee rings the only signs he'd been here at all.

"_What?_" I demanded.

Her face twisted like she meant to say _nothing, _but couldn't quite make it there. This was not nothing, and that was for sure.

"What?" I asked again, I was _not _letting this go. "What _is _it, Sue? Who was that guy?"

"Embry," she said helplessly—like she knew it was something she wasn't supposed to say, but had to, because of a sudden situation she'd never expected to be in. "That was your father."


	2. Chapter 2

Children raised in single-parent homes have a 80% higher possibility of social, behavioral, and emotional issues. Fact.

Don't ask me why I know this. I just like to know things—I'm that weird kid who read the encyclopedia in third grade when everyone else was reading Encyclopedia Brown. I like to know how things are in my world, how they are _exactly. _You can't be too informed—especially about random useless facts, I guess.

Did you know that ketchup travels out of a bottle at speed of twenty-five miles per year? How about that on average, seventeen people die every year from vending machines falling on top of them? Oh, and did you know that children of single-parent families are significantly more likely to become addicted to drugs and alcohol? And that sixty percent of children in therapy come from broken homes?

I can sure understand why. It's really disorienting not ever knowing where you came from, not knowing why your eyes are green or where you got your knack for numbers. Never having even seen half of what created you—it's like some kind of miserable balancing act, and I can understand how you might fall and accidentally break to pieces.

My mom used to tell me that my dad was dead.

I was waiting for her when she got home, sitting on the couch in front of the door so that I could catch her the instant she walked in. I was sitting very still, which was unusual, and even deceptive. Ten minutes ago I'd been running harder than I'd ever run in my life, nose to the ground outside La Push, frantic, trying to figure out how a person could have disappeared so fast. Like he'd never been here at all. I had no more panic in me, I'd used it up—and so for once, I was still.

I think that was her first indicator that something was wrong. "Embry," she said, putting her bag on the counter. She was home a little early, even—the second graders must have been behaving. "Honey, what's wrong? You look sick."

"I had an interesting day at work, Mom," I said. Was that my voice? It sounded a little—shaky. Yikes. "You'll never guess who came into the shop."

"Was it that Keyes girl again?" she said. My mom, Mrs. Oblivious. Anything but her class and her painting, and it was going to go straight over her head. Even now she was heading straight for her painting corner, worried about me, of course, but also concerned for the canvas that was still showing only half a sunrise, begging to be finished.

Here's where the disorientation comes in: I don't have that. I never got that from her—can't draw a stick figure to save my life, and I don't have the _passion_. The way her eyes snap and glitter when she looks at a blank canvas—I'm not like that about anything. She flares like the surface of the sun, and I don't. I'm some kind of lesser moon. Low-key. Prone to wandering. And I don't know where it's _from._

Well, at least I was starting to get an idea. "Yeah, Jill was there," I told her, "and someone else. A guy from out of town."

"Oh yeah?" she said over her shoulder, mixing a red acrylic into a white. You couldn't just do straight colors for sunsets, she'd explained to me yesterday. You needed _shades. _"Was he nice?"

"I don't know, he left pretty fast." The act-casual charade was falling apart pretty fast. I was no good at this. "Guy named Kenai Stokes. You know him?"

Her brush froze inches from the canvas, and she held it there. Didn't move for minutes, Still Life of What Mom Never Wanted You To Know. "Kenai Stokes?" she repeated quietly.

"Or, wait," I said, a little bitterly, even though I couldn't figure how much of this was her fault. "Should I say 'Dad'?"

"Probably," she said evenly, putting her brush down and turning to face me. She didn't look like the type, with her crazy hair and paint under her nails, but she could handle a situation. You can't be a second-grade teacher without that. "Did he say anything to you, Embry? Where is he now?"

"Yeah, he said something to me," I said, suddenly sarcastic, but not necessarily in her direction, just kind of in general. _Angry. _"He said 'thanks for the coffee, kid'. Then he _left_. He's gone, I couldn't find him anywhere."

"Oh, Embry," she said, walking toward me with her arms out. "Your father, he's—it's complicated, with him."

"_Complicated,_" I repeated acidly. "Awesome. Just what I need."

"He's probably not coming back," she said, hugging me. Almost a ridiculous proposition for her at this point, I was more than a foot taller than her. I was a _tree. _"He told me he was never coming here at all—he didn't want to confuse things, and we made our decisions a long time ago—"

"What, he thinks he can just show up here, say hi, and disappear again?" I pushed away from her—gently—I always had to be careful, and too bad I did, because I was _angry. _"Oh no. No, no, no. You told me he was dead and I bought it. I found out he wasn't and I let it _be, _because I knew the odds and I knew he was probably one of _us_—one of the Council _Elders, _Mom."

"_Embry!_" she gasped, one hand flying to her mouth.

"What was I supposed to think, Mom? I'm a werewolf! It came from _somewhere_!"

"It came from your _father_!" she snapped, affronted. "He's a council Elder in _Alaska_, Embry! How dare you think—"

"Alaska, huh?" I latched onto it in a way that made her suddenly regret saying it, she probably hadn't even meant to.

"Embry, no," she said, trying to shut down the sudden spark in my eye. I had gone seventeen years without knowing who my father was, I don't think even she really got how deep that was in me. It wasn't the kind of spark you could really shut down.

"Where in Alaska?" I pressed.

"Embry—"

"I'll go with or without it," I warned, backing toward the door. "Alaska's a big state, Mom." Lay it on top of the United States, and it would touch either end. No joke.

"He's in Denali," she confessed. She was never hard to pump for information—this had been one of the few things, in fact, that I'd never been able to get. "Let's both go up there, Embry, I can come with you—you're right, you should know, honey, we'll get some plane tickets and—" she said, grabbing her bag off the counter as if we might take off right then.

"No," I shook my head, coming up against the screen door with my back and shoulders. I sort of felt like I should say _I need to do this myself, _or _I have to find my own way, _but we'd been watching a Hallmark movie yesterday where both of those things had been said, and now they seemed unoriginal. Instead, I just told her, "Call the school and tell them I'll be out, okay?"

I pushed down on the knob and slid out the screen door, hearing her snap "_Embry!_" as I left. Had to get out of here _quick, _before she remembered that she was the mother and I was the son and I had to do what she said. Especially if she cried—I couldn't handle that. Had to get out of here before she started crying.

I went wolf before I even got out of town, and I could feel Sam reading through my thoughts like they were novel—a ten-cent paperback at this point, could my life _get _any pulpier? Named after a soap star, and it had haunted me ever since. Next thing you know I would be discovering my long-lost evil twin.

I knew Sam wouldn't stop me. We'd just taken care of that Victoria creature, and things were calm with the Cullens—no new threats on the horizon. He'd been telling me that I should take a break. Probably he hadn't meant to Alaska. Probably he meant somewhere I could relax—he was always talking about how tense I looked, how I should get more sleep. I never could get him to believe that this was just the way I looked.

I was maybe five miles past La Push when I started hearing noises in the forest behind me. I looked back but didn't slow my pace, and saw two more wolves slip out of the trees, running up my sides in perfect wing formation. Russet and black.

_Jacob, _I thought to them. _Quil. _I could recognize every wolf in our pack, but these two best of all. The color of their eyes, the tenor of their thoughts. I'd met Quil when I was four years old, and Jacob when I was six. I could have closed my eyes and guessed it was them, and I would have been right. _What do you guys think you're doing? Sam okayed this, I'll be back in a few days._

_What do you _think_ we're doing? _Quil answered in a slightly cranky tone, as if it should be obvious.

_We're coming with you, _Jacob said, and flicked me with his tail.

_Oh, _I said blankly. It hadn't occurred to me, but I guess I'd do the same, right? I mean, we didn't have interlocking friendship necklaces or anything, but we knew what we were. _Okay._

I fell in beside them till they were at my shoulders, surging with every step on either side of me. There was no trail, but I knew where I was going. I ran north.


	3. Chapter 3

This was one road trip I'd never taken.

See, I had taken a lot of road trips. I wasn't one of those La Push kids who'd never been off the reservation, who got all starry and intimidated when they went to Seattle. My mom was kind of a traveler—restless in a way I had never really been, but when you were seven years old, it didn't matter whether you wanted to go to Florida or not. Your backpack was packed with extra jeans when you got home on Friday and your mom was saying, "Hop in the car, kiddo! We're going to Florida." And so you went to Florida.

I'd never been resentful about it though, it wasn't like I _didn't _want to go places (barring a short rebellious phase when I was thirteen where I seriously considered handcuffing myself to the couch)—it was just that it never would have occurred to me on my own.

This had been my one bright idea ever, my one contribution to the family tradition: "Hey, Mom, we should drive up the Alaska Highway!" I don't even remember where I'd gotten it. I think we'd been learning about in school. _I _thought it was a good idea—it was hard, it was time consuming, it was sort of pointless. My mother would love it.

Except she didn't. She got a weird look in her eye—a look that I suddenly, finally had context for—and turned back to her corn bread, saying, "Oh, no, I don't think so," in a fake-breezy voice.

"Why not?" I had demanded, but she'd only given me some unabashedly flimsy excuses about Alaska being cold and Canadians being hostile, or something. I was disappointed, and I let it drop.

Well, I was taking the trip now, and it sucked that I was taking it without her. I'm sure she would have loved to go up the Alcan, would have jumped on that in a second if this wasn't the road that led to my father. I hadn't looked a map or anything, though, so I was going to follow the highway. Just follow the Alaska Highway, and eventually it had to lead to Alaska, right? Made sense to _me._

I wasn't sure I wanted to go to Alaska. I mean, I hadn't exactly stopped to think about it, I'd just kind of run out the door, and I still couldn't quite regret it. I wanted to see my dad, definitely, that part wasn't up for uncertainty. But the closer I got, the stranger and more wild the landscape, scenery in colors and angles I'd never imagined. It was beautiful, no doubt about that—beautiful and extremely hostile. This was a land that did not want to be lived in.

_Hey guys, _I thought back to Jacob and Quil—in case they weren't catching my panicked thoughts already, just thought I'd spread my agitation around. _Hey guys, did you know that the record low temperature in Alaska is negative eighty-three degrees? Did you know that kids in Alaska don't get out of school unless it's negative forty degrees? Did you know that people in Alaska have to plug in their cars every night or else they won't start in the morning?_

_Okay, _Jacob cut in. _That's enough of that._

_No, we didn't know that, _Quil said, sounding amused, at least, not annoyed. _I don't know how _you _know that, Embry. Dork._

_Did you know that—_

_Hey. Embry, _Jacob cut in. _Calm down, man. It's going to be fine._

_What's going to be fine? _I said defensively, though of course I had no secrets from them. Suck. That meant they could hear it every time my thoughts went back to the guy in the coffeeshop—his hair, his scar, his hands on the coffee mug. That was happening kind of a lot. They knew.

_What, you really think we're going to _talk _about it? _Quil said. _What are we, girls?_

_We're just, um—here for you,_ Jacob said uncomfortably. _I mean…if you _want _to talk about it…_

_No, no, no, _I assured them quickly. _I'm fine. I'm good._

_Great, _Jacob grumbled. Slightly cranky from the narrowly-avoided chick flick moment. Guys have trouble handling that kind of thing. _Awesome. Shut up and run._

September wasn't exactly Washington's bad month. We got maybe a little snow, a lot of rain (shocker), maybe the occasional sleet or hail. Certainly it was nothing like this—snowdrifts halfway to our knees every time we took a step, falling through the thin frozen crust to the thin frozen ground. There wasn't a lot that could take us out, being werewolves and all, but this—plowing through knee-deep snow, hour after hour? It was starting to take its toll. We weren't _invincible, _after all. Just…almost invincible.

I wished we could just cut through the forest to the highway at our sides, get our paws on the pavement and run on _that _instead, follow it like it was a river or a deer trail. Unfortunately not an option—I assumed we didn't want to be responsible for any heart attacks when the truckers and road-trippers saw us loping down the street. Causing heart attacks was frowned upon. We _were _supposed to be the good guys.

Quil and Jacob caught my thoughts and sent me back wistful _yes_es, but of course none of us were serious. Either, way we were sick of this—this was my first experience with hardcore snow, and my conclusion was that it _sucked. _The sun was slicing into the horizon already like a circle saw, angry yellow and seeming to spin as we watched it die. Time for a freakin' break.

We curled around each other in the clearing, which would have been horrifying to our masculinity if we were in human form but seemed to be just fine when we were wolves. Go figure. I propped my head on my crossed paws and sent my thoughts searching for Sam.

Sam was a good pack leader—he always made a point to check in with us every night. You didn't have to be wolfed out and waiting for him, but if you had something you needed to tell him—he was there. Every single night, nine o'clock, he was _clockwork, _

The time difference here was—_something, _I don't know, but we had to wait a little until he showed up in our heads. _Jacob, _he said right off the bat. _Your dad says you need to come home. _

_What? Why?_

_Something about an essay due on Monday? _

_Like that _matters, _Sam, this is _important! Jacob yelped—an instant pain reaction to the word "essay". _There is…important, life-changing stuff going on here, I have to be here for the pack! I have to be here for Embry! _

_Billy says your teacher doesn't accept "out on a werewolf roadtrip" as an excuse for late essays, _Sam informed him. Sam was strongly opposed to us flunking out of school. _He says to get your butt back here. _

_But Quil and Embry don't have to—_

_Already finished the essay, _Quil reported promptly. _Finished it two days ago. _

_Geek, _Jacob retorted defensively. _Embry?_

_Oh no, _I shook my head, droplets of melted snow showering off my muzzle. _This is _my _road trip. Long-lost father trumps English essay. _That was how the world worked, right?

_Aww, man! _Jacob grumbled.

_Sorry, Jake, _Quil said, wolf-grinning at him, but truth was it sucked to see him go. Our friendship has always come in threes. Perfect triangle. And tactically, well—

_Academic responsibility aside, _I frowned. _We're going to be seriously undermanned with him gone. Who knows what we could run into up there!_

_Yeah, _Quil said dryly. Quil, personally, had always had trouble believing there was anything he couldn't handle. _There could be some really vicious reindeer. Moose, even. _

_There's a wolfpack, _I reminded him. _There's at least one wolf. _

_You think your dad's going to try to kill us? _Quil asked blankly.

_I don't even know the guy, _I said. _I don't know _what _he'll do, I don't know what kind of person he is. May I remind you that he didn't even leave a tip. _

_Don't worry, _Sam said, with a blackness in his voice that I didn't have an explanation for. _I'm sending you a replacement for Jacob. _

_Who? _I demanded. His tone was making me suspicious, there was something he wasn't saying. It was the voice people used for unpleasant surprises, like when they said here's a birthday cake, but oh guess what, it's poisoned. Hi, I'm going to hug you, but only because I broke your iPod. _Who is it? It's not _Leah, _is it? _

_It's not Leah, _he confirmed, at least. _You'll see in the morning. _

_Wait—Sam—_ But he wasn't sticking around to get whined at. He was gone, leaving us staring helplessly at each other.

_Any guesses? _Quil said finally.

_Dude, _Jacob said, his tail swishing back and forth in annoyance. _Do not even bother. _


	4. Chapter 4

I am not a light sleeper. I mean seriously, I am not. I am one of those two-alarm-clocks, pour-a-bucket-of-water-over-his-head kind of sleepers, I am a _log. _I can fall asleep on a dime and then once I'm out, I am _out. _I am _gone. _This isn't something that I'm really proud of or anything—it's certainly caused its share of problems in my life, but hey. That's the way it is.

Alarms can't wake me up. Yelling can't wake me up. Kicking can't wake me up. Here's what can wake me up: vampires.

It's the smell, it's the instinct—you smell that hot sweet vampire scent, like burning sugar. Neurons fire, muscles tense, and you are _up. _Even if you're me.

I must have been tired, because it took me a lot longer to wake up than it should have. There are some days when the wind blows the wrong way from Forks and I sit bolt upright in my bed, smelling the Cullens. Every vein of me pulsing with the awareness of them, no matter how harmless my brain knew them to be. Not this morning. This morning, I opened my eyes and there were boots right in front of my face.

I don't know what I was expecting—there are vampires everywhere, vampires in Canada too, of course, but that hadn't occurred to me. I guess I'd been spoiled. I scrambled up at once, suddenly very much regretting having changed back to human last night.

Fortunately for me, they weren't serious boots. They weren't combat boots, they weren't even hiking boots. They were red suede calf-length stilettos, soaked darker red up the sides with melted snow. These weren't monster vampire boots. These were Rosalie boots.

Honestly, I would have rather had Leah.

"Morning, sunshine," she said, standing over me with her arms crossed, sending me down that famous glare. Could melt a hole in sheet metal from fifty feet, that's what they said. Could thaw the whole state of Alaska.

"Rosalie?" Quil said groggily, surging awake next to me. "What the—what are you doing here?"

"I'm your _backup,_" she said, saying that word the way most people reserved for saying things like "cockroach" and "flesh-eating bacteria".

"_You're _our backup?" I repeated, in case it had been some sort of horrible mistake. I didn't hate the Cullens. I really didn't. It wasn't in me to hate people who were harmless, and it wasn't in me to hate people who were trying to be good. Now, that didn't mean we were going to be having any slumber parties anytime soon, braiding each other's hair or anything. But we could be civil. We could have a little mutual respect.

At least most of us could. Because the thing was, prejudice usually goes two ways. Historically, it had always been the Cullens reaching out the hand of friendship, always been them coming to us. But not all of them were reaching. Not all of them were willing to play ball.

Actually, basically it was just Rosalie. "Yes," she said crisply. "I'm your backup. I'm supposed to replace—what's the kid's name? Jason Black?"

"Jacob," Quil said automatically. "Are you telling me that _Sam_ sent you to—"

"Oh, be serious," she said, with all her regal scorn and _all _her beauty.

Rosalie Hale. She made me want to cringe just looking at her, even knowing what she was, even knowing what she was capable of. She made me want to stammer and steal glances at her from the corners of my eyes. Heaven help any _human _boys who crossed her path. It would be _carnage. _Even knowing what she was, it was hard to keep my head straight. She was so beautiful she made my teeth hurt.

"What, you think Sam Uley told me to go help you two out, and I said yes sir and ran right up here?" she continued, striding away with her shoes punching heelprints in the show. "Please. I'd been wanting to go up and see my friend in Denali, and I heard you were headed that way."

"We are," I said warily, walking behind her, my arms crossed over my chest. I wasn't cold, not even now that we'd crossed over into Alaska, only wearing the shorts I carried with me and that was it. I was never cold. Now that Rosalie had shown up, though, I was suddenly thinking that I should have worn a little more clothes. "Are you, um—are you, um, are you sure you want to come with—_us?_"

"Um, yeah, um, I think I'm going to," she mocked, turning back around right in my face. She was almost as tall as me. There weren't many people I could look at straight on and not down to, but she had to be at least 5'11. She could look me in the eye. "Strength in numbers, you know? Emmett won't come with me, he doesn't like Tanya, and if I can't get anyone else I might as well go with you."

She was making my _head _hurt—I mean, I hadn't exactly been the Alpha of this little trip before, but I sure as hell wasn't now. She was so _bossy_ and busy and mean, so full of casual menace, I couldn't keep _up _with her. "Rosalie—"

"What do you want _now?_" she said, exasperated. "What? Do you want me to chip in for gas money? Do you want to see some ID? What's the deal, sparky?"

"Nothing," I said hurriedly, taking a step back. Suddenly, this trip had gotten much more interesting. And by interesting, I mean really horrible. "Nothing, nothing. We're fine."

"Glad to hear it," she said, and somehow made it sound like a threat. This was a girl who woke up in a morning thinking about how she could make her life better, and maybe, if she was bored, about how she could make everyone else's life worse. I don't know. Maybe I was stereotyping her. Probably I was stereotyping her. Considering that I generally visualized her as a thirty-foot harpy with claws and flames coming out of her mouth—I'd say probably.

She was stalking away drifts up to her knees, knowing that we would follow her, because people always did. Ladies and gentlemen, Rosalie Hale.

I looked over at Quil, still standing back where he was, standing shirtless in the snow next to me, and I tell you, we looked _crazy. _Crazier still for this new addition to our lives.

I raised my eyebrows at him. We were human just now, we weren't reading each other's thoughts. But I'd known him since I was four. We knew what we were saying. I raised my eyebrows, and he gave me a half smile back. Shrugged his shoulders. And went after Rosalie.

---

I wasn't much for confrontation.

I guess I didn't really have anything to fight about, was all. I was really just more of the stand-on-the-sidelines type—wait for someone to yell for help, pull me into it. Newton's First Law: objects in motion tend to stay in motion. But what about the objects that were never in motion in the first place? What about us?

So if Rosalie wanted to be here and be bossy, if she wanted to drag us to the interstate and drive us to Alaska in her car because our wolf forms "creeped her out", well—okay. It _was _a nice car. Nothing to start a fight about.

Well, that was my opinion, anyway. Quil, on the other hand, seemed to think it was something to start a fight about after all. Quil _liked _to fight. Well, that wasn't exactly right—it wasn't like he was mean-spirited or naturally contentious, or anything. He just enjoyed a good healthy argument, the kind that was just for brain exercise.. He was hardly ever serious.

Of course, Rosalie didn't know that. So when Quil said things like "Your car smells terrible," she didn't know to avoid getting sucked in. And so she got sucked in.

"Listen, I hope you understand _exactly _how generous I'm being, letting you ride in it at _all_. I'm not ever going to get this dog-smell out of the upholstery."

"Well, it wasn't exactly my idea to take the Porsche," Quil retorted. "Believe me, I'd much rather be running on my own two feet."

"Don't you mean _four_?" she fired back. "This is faster. And it doesn't involve any pine sap."

"Faster?" Quil scoffed. "Have you _seen _me run?"

"Have you looked at the speedometer lately? I can't remember the last time I was under 100."

"Only 100 in a _Porsche?_ You must be a woman."

"_Excuse me?_"

All right. That was it. Don't love Rosalie, do love Quil, but I was out. I needed a break. I turned to my door and flipped the unlock button, opening it carefully by inches.

"Hey!" Quil yelled, suddenly and effectively distracted. "Embry! What are you doing?"

"I am going to—" I said vaguely, concentrating on keeping the door open, "do some scouting. I think we're getting pretty close, I'm going to go check out the area." _I'm going to get away from you two until you finally strangle each other and I have some peace. _

"Are you crazy?" Rosalie wanted to know. "Did you _hear _me say how fast this car was moving? We need to stay together, we need to—"

"Bye," I said, watching the ground blur past, trying to convince myself to jump out now, right this instant. One, two, three, jump.

This was stupid. It was just a moving car. I'd broken bones, I'd punctured a lung, I'd fallen off a thirty-foot cliff and healed in minutes. There was nothing left in the world that I should be afraid of. But here I was staring at the fast-moving scenery, trying to convince myself I should join it, and failing. Couldn't take the plunge.

"Hey, Embry," Quil said uncertainly, reaching for me. And then the car hit a pothole and jolted suddenly sideways, and my decision was made for me.

I went tumbling out of the open door into the snow, but fortunately for me, I had gotten very good at pretending that I had done things on purpose, when in fact I had done them accidentally. By the time my feet hit the ground, they were paws, and I was running with the ready stride of someone who fell out of the car _on purpose, _thank you very much. It had been what I'd been intending to do anyway. So there.

We'd passed the "Welcome to Alaska" sign some time ago, so we were definitely, officially in Alaska. In a way, though, it was good that Rosalie had come along, because this was where my strategy had run out. There was no Denali Highway, after all. All I had really known was that it was somewhere in the middle, sort of, and that I would just maybe keep a lookout for Mount McKinley. I never had to share this fairly embarrassing plan with Rosalie, though, because she'd been here a thousand times and knew _exactly _where Denali was, thank you very much. In fact, she'd helpfully gotten me within sight of said Mount McKinley—tallest mountain in the US, 20,300 feet or something like that—so that when I got out of the car, I knew which direction to run.

Of course, I didn't really make it all that far. In fact, I had barely made it into the trees before it was in my nose and mouth again, sharp and sweet. Burning sugar. Fantastic. I turned just in time to catch of glimpse of the girl slamming into me from the side, tackling me over into the snow, leaving long furrows like screwed-up snow angels.

Blond hair and long fingernails, digging into my back as she swung me around into a tree.

_Rosalie! _I yelled in my head, even though I knew she couldn't hear me, almost better that way because I was pretty annoyed_._ _What the hell?  
_I shoved myself out of her grip and scrambled to my feet, turning back to her to see that wait a second, something was definitely wrong. Strawberry-blonde hair not golden blonde, shorter sharper not the same. Vampire. But not Rosalie. Not Rosalie at all.


	5. Chapter 5

I had asked Quil once about imprinting.

Only once. I've only ever had the guts to ask him one time, and even then it was hard to make myself do it. You see, growing up in a pack where all your best friends keep discovering their One True Loves left and right, the concept of love tends to get a little distorted for you. I mean, they _say _it's a good thing—Hallmark and Valentine's Day and adoring couples, they all assure you love is great, it's the best thing ever.

It didn't seem like the best thing ever. It seemed like two iron handcuffs and a chain. The sudden truncation of your future.

This had a lot to do with what _kind _of love I was expecting, though—it had a lot to do with imprinting. See, love is not something you look forward to when you know it's inevitable. It's just the lack of choice that bothers me, the fact that when I fall in love, it'll be with a gun to my head. Kind of creeps an seventeen-year-old out, if you know what I mean.

When I'd asked Quil, though, he'd disagreed. At first, he had just gone on and on about Claire, and how wonderful she was, and how she would be going into kindergarten soon and he was worried about her getting exactly the right teacher, blah blah blah. Quil was better than most of the other imprintees, mostly because of Claire's age and his current romantic status of Babysitter, but it was still enough to make you gag sometimes.

Finally I managed to stop him and tell him that I didn't want to know about the love part, I wanted to know about the _imprinting _part. The specific moment. When it happened to me, I wanted to know. I wanted to be ready.

He just looked at me sort of blankly, like perhaps that might have been a stupid question. And he said, "Don't worry, Embry. You'll know."

"Yes, I'm sure I will," I said impatiently. "But what is it _like?_"

He thought about that for a few minutes, and then said, "Do you remember back in the seventh grade, when Mrs. Darby switched the seating arrangements every quarter?"

"Yeah," I said, confused. "What about it?"

"Remember third quarter," he continued, "when we switched seats, and all of the sudden you realized you'd ended up right next to Jeanie Cavendish?"

"I remember," I said, smiling at the memory. I had barely been able to believe my luck—sudden seventh grade bliss.

"It's like that," he told me. "Only times a million."

It had been an okay explanation. I'd certainly bought it for a very long time. The thing is, though, it turns out that there's really no good way to explain it. Imprinting, it turns out, is something that you just have to experience for yourself, like roller coasters, or sushi. It was an okay explanation as far as it went, but there was so much more to it.

How do I know this? Well, because of that vampire with the strawberry blonde hair. I looked up at her and realized two things in quick succession: one, that she was not Rosalie. Two, that I was suddenly and quite surprisingly in love with her.

I didn't know who she was. I knew that she was a vampire and that she was trying to kill me—neither of them things that would traditionally encourage love, but there it was. I looked at her and she snapped into sudden focus, like she'd been sharpened to painful bright color while everything else around her blurred away to nothing. I knew nothing about her but suddenly I was sure she was beautiful, intelligent, interesting, witty, fun, honest, kind, passionate, creative, good at checkers. I loved her. I was having trouble thinking about things that weren't her.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time to sit and ponder this sudden, life-changing event—because I loved her, yes, absolutely, forever, but she didn't seem to know that. She still pretty much just wanted to kill me. Even as I stood there in lovestruck strickenness, she was coming back at me, slamming me back into the tree I had just bounced off a minute ago. I could tell because of the dent—now there were _two _dents. Ow.

I wasn't even fighting back, of course not, what if I gave her a black eye, or hurt her feelings? But it was a little difficult to explain that I was suddenly in love with her when I was, you know—a wolf.

I never thought I'd say this, but it was a good thing when Rosalie showed up. Unfortunately, she didn't show up _first—_no, Quil beat her by a good few seconds, barreling into the woman's side and driving her into the snow, paws on her chest.

_No! _I yelled at him. _Quil, no! Get _off _her!_

I didn't get him to stop, but I did manage to get his attention long enough for the woman to get her hands around his throat. Oops.

"Tanya?"

Rosalie saving the day. Rosalie strangely enough the _only _one who could defuse the situation, who could get every single one of us to look up at her at the same time, startled, stopped mid-violence.

"_Tanya,_" Rosalie said, now sure of what she was seeing and a little alarmed by it. "Tanya, hey, don't do that! Don't do that, I can explain!"

"Rosalie?" The first time I had heard her voice, and it was—God, it was beautiful. Glass bells with glass clappers, words made out of glass. Beautiful. "You're not—with _them, _are you?"

"Actually, I am," she said distastefully, putting a hand on Quil's shoulder and pulling him off Tanya. Just get some distance between them, get some distance between them. "Unfortunately. They're cool, Tanya. Don't kill them, I guess."

_Thanks for that glowing endorsement, _I thought back at her, but only Quil could hear me.

"I don't know what you're saying," Rosalie said coolly, as if I were speaking some sort of low-class Cockney that she disapproved of. "Go get human, Lassie, you're freaking her out."

"That would be an understatement," Tanya said, standing with fluid grace, snow clinging to her hair and the fabric of her shirt. "I'd say less 'freaking out' than 'infuriating', but yeah. Freaking out is part of it."

I was totally up for that idea. I'm not exactly an Abercrombie model, but I know for a fact that I look a lot better as a person than a gigantic wolf. Imprinting was two-way, right? Did that mean she was in love with me? It was hard to ask her when I had a muzzle for a mouth.

_Quil, _I said. _The car. Where's the car?_

_Why? _He was still a little busy staring at Tanya like he wanted to rip her head off. We were going to have to talk about that.

_Pants, man, _I reminded him. _I need my pants. _

_Oh, I guess,_ he said, nonplussed. _It's over on the side of the road—Rosalie just kind of parked it right into the snow. Can't miss it. _

_Thanks, _I said, and went in search of pants.

When I got back, they seemed to be in the awkward introduction stage, all standing around the clearing with their arms crossed—Quil already human and clothed and all, looking distinctly unfriendly.

"Quil, this is Tanya," Rosalie was saying, smiling—the only one who found any of this amusing. "Tanya, this is Quil Ateara and—"

"Embry Call." I was walking across the clearing before I could stop myself, holding my hand out for a handshake even though I basically just wanted to grab her and kiss her. Good thing I had a little self-control.

She shook my hand mostly out of surprise, because there was a person coming at her with a hand outstretched, and that was what you did. I think she was probably expecting me to let go, though, and I didn't. I closed my other hand around her and held it. As far as I was concerned, I was never letting go again.

She tried to pull her hand back, but I was stronger than she expected. She pulled harder. Nothing. "Can I have my hand back?" she said crossly.

"I don't think so."

"Rosalie—" she glanced over her shoulder, looking for help or explanation.

"It's nice to meet you," I continued. "I'm Embry Call. Also I'm in love with you."


	6. Chapter 6

They say that love makes you blind. I don't know if that's true. Well, it's at least partially true. Evidence: I was now in love with a vampire.

See, I don't know if I agree that love _really _makes you blind, though, because I was fully aware of what I was doing. Stupid, maybe. Brainwashed? No. I was the guy walking straight off the edge of the cliff with full awareness of every step, _choosing _to walk off the edge because I thought I had a good reason to do it.

Guess what? I had been wrong about love. Because it wasn't walking off a cliff and plunging to my death, it was more like—skydiving. Base jumping. I was in love with a vampire and I was going to _be _in love with a vampire, I was just in _love _with her and that was all.

I had always assumed that love was sort of two-way, though, and there had always been a lot of evidence to support that assumption. Tanya was not supporting that assumption. She was just _looking _at me—glaring at me in a way that made me think that she wanted to set me on fire. That was if her eyes didn't do the trick before then, wow, did she have a _glare! _It was actually pretty hot.

"Let go of my hand," she said icily. Choosing to address the hand issue before the declaration-of-love issue, very sensible. She was so _sensible! _"Right now. Or you're going to lose yours."

"If you really want me to," I said, letting go but not stepping back. "Do you want me to? I mean—you don't happen to be in love with me, do you?"

She gave me the look again. In my defense, I _knew _it was a stupid question, but it had to be asked. I had to know just how difficult this was going to be. "_No, _I'm not in love with you!" she yelled, backing away from me as if I were some dangerous sort of monster—and I was even in human form, and all. "Rose, what is wrong with this guy? What is _wrong _with you?"

"Embry, did you just—" Quil gaped.

"Yes," I said, grinning back at him. "I did."

"_You _are creepy," Tanya pointed a finger at me. "You're creeping me out. I don't like you."

Not exactly what I'd been looking for. I guess I could have worked on my approach, a little. "Come on, Tanya," Rosalie said, taking her by the shoulders and walking her away—the best friend pulling her away from the creepy guy hitting on her. I'd seen it before. _Girls. _Honestly. "Let's get out of here."

"Wait a second—"

"Denali's thirty miles out, Quil," Rosalie told him, condescending mostly out of habit but also just really, really sick of us. As far as she was concerned, she was the schoolteacher herding children on a field trip, and she was sick of it. "You can see the mountain from here. I'm _sure _you can manage to find the pack on your own."

"I'm _sure _we can. Have a nice day."

"Tanya—!" It was very important to me that I stay close to her, and she was walking away.

She turned back just the slightest bit—not enough that I could look her in the eyes. "I don't know who you are," she said firmly, as if it were a simple fact that she needed very badly for me to understand. "I don't know who you are. Leave me alone."

Well. _That _wasn't going to happen.

---

Denali National Park was so beautiful that I felt that I shouldn't touch it. It was paradise, glass lakes and upswept mountains, green into white into blue. I had thought Alaska beautiful but this was just paradise, this was _perfect. _I breathed a little quieter trying not to disturb the silence. I ran a little lighter trying not to break the pine needles under my feet.

There were two things that I could smell here, right through the pine and rabbit—one was the sweet vampire smell, disturbingly omnipresent—traces of the scent on trees and riverbeds almost every mile. The second smell was thick and cedar-dark, oak-bitter—werewolf. That smell hadn't been around at first, but as we got deeper into the park it got stronger and stronger. A good sign—we were going the right way.

_No, _I explained to Quil as we ran. _Did you see her eyes? They were gold. _

_I'm sure they were very pretty, _Quil said patiently. _I still don't think it's smart to fall in love with a vampire. _

_No, Quil, that means that she doesn't eat humans, _I explained. We'd heard the whole lecture once from Carlisle, and I was remembering now that he _had _mentioned another coven like them—trying to prove that they weren't just mutant freaks, I think. And he had mentioned Alaska. _She's _good, _I know she is. And in case you hadn't figured it out, I don't exactly have a choice, either way. _

_Are you _sure _this is an imprint? _he asked dubiously. _I don't know, Embry. _

_Yes, _I confirmed yet again. _I'm sure. Weren't you sure when it happened to you? I'm _sure, _Quil. _

_I just don't see why the ancient mating instincts of our werewolf ancestors would hook you up with a _vampire, Quil grumbled. _Seems a little weird to me. _

_Makes two of us, _I said blithely. _But what can I do? _

_Stay away from her._

_You know that's not going to happen. _

_Yeah, _Quil sighed, _I guess not. Can't wait till _Sam _hears about this one. _

I meant to say something back, not sure what, he did have a point after all. Instead, I ran through a thick stand of trees and came out into a clearing on the other side, abrupt and unexpected end of wilderness.

There were houses.

They were good houses, they were homogenous—muted, made of wood, houses careful not to disrupt the beauty lines of the park. The only problem with them, really, was that they were _here. _I hadn't been expecting them.

As we came out of the woods, two other wolves broke from the woods beside us, cutting between us and the houses in a definitely protective way. They were snarling, lips back from their teeth, padding towards us as if they meant to drive us back.

We were totally willing to be driven back. We didn't even know what this _was, _what we'd just stumbled onto, but it was a thing containing angry werewolves, and that was never good.

_Who are you? _the bigger white wolf demanded, and it was a surprise to have a voice in my head that I didn't know. Could they hear my thoughts, too? Considering that my thoughts were currently full of vampire adoration, that could be…not so good.

_You smell like wolves, and that's the only reason you got this close, _the smaller gray wolf told us. _What are you doing here? Who are you? _

_Embry Call, _I said, backing away obligingly—no reason to let them think we were a threat. _I'm Embry Call and this is Quil Ateara. We're from the La Push pack, we, um—come in peace. _

The big wolf on the right made a coughing noise that looked like it might be a laugh, but I wasn't sure whether he was laughing with me or at me. At me seemed like a very good possibility. Gah. It wasn't my fault that I said stupid things sometimes.

_What are you _doing _here? _the smaller one demanded, unamused. _What do you want? _

_I'm— _I started, then shuddered to a stop. Trying to think of how to say it, what to say at all. The glares of the Denali wolves weren't helping a lot, either—I felt their eyes on me, watching me as a threat, waiting for me to screw up or do something dangerous. _Um. I'm…_

_We're looking for Kenai Stokes, _Quil said. _Is he, uh—does he live here? _

_What do you want with Kenai Stokes? _the white wolf asked warily. As if we might be here to assassinate him or something.

_Well, _I said helplessly. This conversation certainly hadn't gone the way I might have wanted, but what could you do? _Um. I'm his son. _

_No, you're _not, snapped the smaller wolf with a ferocity that surprised me. I mean—well, yes I was. Why was he so sure that I wasn't? Why did he care?

_Yes, I am, _I said carefully. _…How is that a problem? _

_You're not his son, _he maintained fiercely. I'm _his son. _

_Oh, and that's mutually exclusive, is it? _Quil snarled. He didn't like this guy, didn't like his tone. In fact, I could hear him thinking about jumping the guy, and I quickly advised him not to. Not the best way to begin diplomatic relations.

_You're not his son! _the gray wolf maintained. _That's not even possible, okay? _

_Hey, Luke, chill, _the big wolf said, sounding a little alarmed. That made two of us. _Calm down, man, everything is fine. _

_Listen, _I said warily. _I'm sorry if this is surprising or upsetting, but—yeah. I'm pretty sure I'm his son. Maybe, um…maybe we're brothers. _

_Brothers?? _he yelled. Somehow this was all very offensive to him—I really couldn't get a handle on what was going on here. Especially when he snarled and rocked onto his back legs and jumped at me, teeth snapping for my throat.


	7. Chapter 7

I had never had a brother. It had always been a pretty basic family, me and my mom, just her to me and back. A line segment. No father, no siblings, no cousins no uncles and aunts. Well, cousins and stuff, but they were all way out in the Midwest, and plus my mom didn't like them. Whenever we talked about them, words like "straight-laced" and "farming community" came up, but spoken with an inflection that meant these were _bad _things. My mom, professional black sheep, occasional loon.

Anyway, the closest thing I'd ever had to brothers had been the pack. Supportive, protective, bound to you with something the next notch up from friendship. That was what it was like to have a brother, right?

Well, apparently not. Apparently what brothers did was try to rip your throat out.

As crazy-hostile as this Luke kid was, I really had not been expecting him to jump at me like that. I wasn't ready—he would have hit me and he would have done some serious damage. That would not have been a good start to our relationship at all.

Fortunately for me, someone else was a little more on the ball. Luke didn't even make it to me—he only got about halfway before _wham! _The other wolf got between us and slammed him with his shoulder, tumbling him over into the snow.

_Luke, _chill! the guy was yelling. _What is _wrong _with you, man, you can't just go around trying to bite people's heads off! _

_Did you hear what he said, Caleb? _Luke was struggling under him, trying to twist away and presumably try to kill me again. Did they have pharmacies in Alaska? Psychiatrists? Because this kid was _seriously _ in need of some medicating. _He said he was my brother, do you know what that _means? _He's saying that my dad was sleeping around, that he was having—_

_Luke! Shut _up!Two other wolves were running at us from the houses, probably called by Caleb and thank God, because Luke the Psycho was in serious need of a police escort. _Jason, Dale, can you give me a _hand _here? _

_Luke gone off again? _one of them asked, circling between them and us like they were herding sheep as Caleb started to let Luke up.

_Kind of reminds you of Paul, doesn't he? _Quil said wryly, standing well back from the situation.

_What? Paul was never this bad. _

_Sorry about that, _Caleb said, coming toward us as the others moved away. _Luke's got some—issues. _

Neither of us were going touch that with a ten-foot pole. _Okay, _Quil agreed swiftly. _Cool. _

_So, uh—none of the _rest _of you have a problem with us, right? _I asked, just to make sure. One near-death experience a day was quite enough for me.

_Well, _Caleb hedged. _Technically you probably shouldn't…_be _here. But if you are Mr. Stokes' son…_

_Then I should see him, _I finished firmly.

_Yeah, _Caleb said. _I guess you should. Let's get human, I'll take you into town._

---

I don't know what kind of goofy ideas I had about Alaska—I think I basically had the idea that that everybody in Alaska lived in igloos and drove dogsleds around everywhere they went. If I'd actually stopped to think about those ideas, I probably would have realized that they were actually pretty stupid. I mean, thousands of people lived in Alaska—I'm sure it was just as civilized as any other state. Possibly more civilized than South Dakota.

Even so, I was a little surprised to be sitting in on a couch in a fully non-igloo two-story house, floral themed with Normal Rockwell pictures on the wall. I had my feet crossed under the couch and my hands locked together on my lap, feeling a little uncomfortable. Quil was sitting next to me. A girl was sitting across from me, looking at me intently, as if she were trying to find something out.

She was about fourteen or fifteen, skinny, short hair, totally unashamed to be staring at us. As soon as we had been ushered into the living room, she had just followed us right in, sitting down on the loveseat across from us with an expectant expression, saying nothing.

"Excuse me," she said finally. "I don't suppose either of you have just imprinted on me."

Quil and I exchanged a look. "Um," I said. "No. No, both of us are spoken for."

She heaved a giant sigh, disappointed but resigned. "Of course you are. Everyone around here is _spoken for._"

Boy, I knew how _that _felt. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Quil said helpfully. "Sorry. That must suck."

"Oh, it's all right," she said, in the heavy teenage tone that meant that it was not actually all right at all. "It's fun to have you here anyway. Paskiak can get a little old, just the same people all the time, and all of them _in love._ I'm Kira, by the way. It's Quil and Embry, right? I heard you talking to Caleb."

"Paskiak," I said, trying the word out on my tongue. If I really was the son of a Native Alaskan elder, then this was my heritage. Shouldn't this feel right and natural, suddenly familiar? At least it explained why my fur was light grey—Arctic wolf—when everyone else in the pack was darker. "That's—here, right?"

"And what about that, anyway?" Quil asked suspiciously, as if he suspected this might all be part of some kind of elaborate ruse. "How come there's this whole—_village _in the middle of the national park? I mean, isn't that sort of illegal?"

"Not for _us,_" Kira said. "God, what kind of a tribe are _you _from? It was our land first, you know."

"Yeah, we know," I said, smiling. "So it's like a reservation, then?"

"Well, 'like' a reservation in that it's a reservation," she said. "Yeah."

"So, um," I said. "Do you know Kenai Stokes?"

"Mr. Stokes," she asked, surprised. "Yeah, he's—"

"Right here."

The voice came from the doorway—from the man _standing _in the doorway, tall, close-cropped hair, silver crescent scar. "Oh," I said. "Hi, Dad."

---

"Embry," Kenai said. "What are you doing here?"

I had an answer to that question. I had that answer, I really did. But I was looking at my dad and his eyes were _very _black, and he didn't really seem to have—facial expressions. It was disconcerting. He was a disconcerting person, and he was disconcerting me. It was possible that I was terrified of him.

"Um," I said.

"What are you doing here?" he repeated. It was just the two of us in the living room now, just me and Kenai. The instant he'd shown up, people disappeared like a magic trip, making barely audible excuses and slipping out the side door. Even Quil was gone, God knows where they'd taken him. This whole place was _weird. _

"What am I _doing _here?" What could I _possibly _be doing here? "I came to see you, dad."

"How did you—"

"Sue Clearwater," I said. "Then mom."

"Sue Clearwater." He shook his head. "I didn't recognize her."

"Yeah, she got older," I said, "I assume."

"So you're telling me you that you came all the way up here just because you saw me once—"

"'Thanks for the coffee, kid'?" I quoted.

"Yeah," he said, and had the grace to look a little ashamed. "Sorry, I shouldn't have even—listen, how did you even _get _here? I was only there two days ago."

"Well," I said carefully. "Let's just say I inherited more than your eyes."

"Oh." He caught on instantly—I could see it in his eyes (hey! An emotion!). "You're a shifter?"

"Sure am."

"Oh," he said. "Sorry about that."

"Doesn't bother me anymore," I told him. "So, um. Now that I'm here…" Again, I had run out of plan. I had hardly expected to be able to find him at all, and _now _what? What were we going to do, go mini-golfing?

"Embry," he said. "You can't stay here."

"_What?_"

"You can't stay," he said firmly. "Embry, I'm sorry. You have to go."


	8. Chapter 8

When I was a kid, I used to imagine that my dad was a secret agent.

You have to remember, I thought he was dead. My mom told me he had died in a car crash when I was a baby—not because she was mean or out to screw me up or anything, but just because she thought it would be easier. Even thinking he was dead, though, there was some part of me that was always making up elaborate alternatives—maybe he's a secret agent and he has to _fake _like he's dead, because he's in danger, or we're in danger. Maybe one day he'll walk back in the door and say I'm sorry, son. It was for the good of the country. I always loved you.

Later in life, I found out that this was a pretty stupid idea.

Still, I had never really stopped imagining meeting my father. I'd imagined it a thousand ways, a hundred million times. I'd imagined it every possible time, every place, in a car, with a fox—you get the idea_. _Since I was generally an optimistic person, though, these imaginings had never ended up with him kicking me out of his house immediately after.

"What do you mean I have to go?" I demanded, standing up from the floral couch-covered couch. "I'm your _son!_"

"I know you're my son," Kenai said. "I'm _sorry, _I don't mean that I don't want to—spend _time _with you or whatever, but I _promised._"

"What? Promised _who?_"

"I promised your mother!"

"She wouldn't," I gasped. "No. No, no, no. She wouldn't ask you to kick me out of the house! That is _not her._"

"You think I don't know what Michelle would or wouldn't do?"

"Well, you haven't exactly been around to find out," I said. This was not helpful. Things had started bad and I was making them worse. This was my _father, _I shouldn't be _yelling _at him. We should—_hug_, or something, right? "She wouldn't _do _that."

"She told me to stay out of your life," Kenai said, articulating every word clearly, precisely. "She told me it would just _confuse _you, that you wouldn't understand."

"I'm going to have to assume she meant _before _I knew that you were alive, and that you lived in Alaska, and that you couldn't take five minutes out of your _road _trip to tell me who you were and _why _you're not around!"

And that was just all for us. He had nothing to say to that, and I had nothing more to say. There was the sound of glass clinking together, dropping like rain into the silence. I turned and saw a woman standing in the doorway, holding two glasses in her hand. Half filled with amber liquid, surprise and awkwardness on her face.

"Hi," she said, forced into it when she saw I was looking. "Do you—want some iced tea?"

"Embry," Kenai said belatedly, running a hand through his hair. "This is my wife Shila. Shila, this is my oldest son Embry."

"It is so nice to meet you," she said warmly, giving one glass to Kenai so she could come shake my hand. "You look just like him. You're from Washington, aren't you? How long will you be staying?"

I stared at the woman—long brown curls and big eyes, an apron tied over her clothes that read "Kiss The Cook". She seemed like she might be a nice lady, but I couldn't stop myself wondering what was so great about her. Whatwas it that made her so much better than my mom? My mom was _pretty, _she was funny, she stayed in shape. I couldn't figure out why anyone would leave my mom for Shila.

"I'm not staying," I told her. I was surprised to hear myself say it, but as soon as the words left my mouth I knew they were right. "I'm—not staying. I have to go."

"Hey," he said, reaching over and catching my arm. "Embry—"

Caleb's head popped into the room, looking the least chill I'd ever seen him, _obviously_ something wrong. "Kenai," he said. "Vampires less than a mile out and coming this way—just over Kahittna."

That did it—he was officially distracted. "What? Where did you see them? How many of them?"

"We're not sure," Caleb said tensely. "Dale saw one of them outside the houses, by the river—the blonde one. The rest of them are up on the glacier."

Blonde one. The blonde one. _Tanya. _"All right," Kenai said, suddenly transformed into leader-guy, the same face and voice Sam got whenever there were problems. "Caleb, get Luke, Gavin, and Aaron—go after the blonde. I'll take the other boys to Kahittna."

He was still hanging onto my arm, loosely—loose enough that I could pull away from him with no problem and make for the door. I didn't know what was going on, I didn't know how things worked here, but they were _not _going to hurt Tanya.

"Hey, Embry!" Kenai called after me, but I was absolutely not stopping. He didn't want me, he didn't care about me, and I was going to take my best shot at not caring about him either. But there was one person I was going to care about.

"Embry?" Quil said in surprise as I blew past him, waiting on the steps. "Embry! Where are you going?"

"Tanya," I said. Basically word association, at this point, I had _things to do._ "Be back soon."

"Embry!" he yelled. "This is getting _really old!_"

He needed to suck it up. After all, I'd been dealing with _his _lovey-doveyness for almost six months now, and how long had I been imprinted? Less than a day. He had _awhile _to go before he could complain.

I didn't know how good these guys were, didn't know if they could get moving as quickly as my pack could, but if they could then I didn't have much time. Biggest problem, of course, was that I couldn't go wolf. First of all, I didn't know yet whether or not the other pack could tap my thoughts, and if they could—yikes. That would not be good. More importantly, though, it was about Tanya. She was a vampire.

Now, I understand that this was going to be a fundamental obstacle for our relationship any way you slice it. Do _you _know how it feels to be simultaneously attracted and repulsed by a person? It's awkward. I loved her, but I'd been taught all my life that I should hate her. This was tricky. However, I was still not going to be the problem here. _She_ was the one who needed a little space. And I was guessing that seeing me charge straight at her in full werewolf form was not going to help with the wooing.

I was still pretty fast as a human—you have to remember, we're practically wolfmen even _as _humans. Did you see Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Terminator"? Yeah, we're kind of like that. We're too strong and too fast and we're pretty much indestructible. Caleb had found me a pair of shoes, thank goodness, so at least I wasn't running over sticks and stones barefooted, but hell, I'd done it before.

I knew exactly where she was, I could smell her—one great thing about imprinting is that it literally changes you, changes your _brain, _probably. It recalibrates you to love everything about her, despite what you might have hated before. I didn't hate the smell of her—the bleached burned sugar smell, somehow it didn't bother me anymore. It was just part of _her, _and therefore I was going to love it. It definitely helped me find her when I needed to, didn't it?

The way it turned out, she found me first. I mean, I knew I was close, but suddenly she was sliding in behind me, wrapping a hand around my neck. "Please tell me you're not stalking me," she said.

Not technically, no, but this wasn't the time to sit and discuss it. I grabbed her hand at the wrist and pulled it away, using it to drag her out of the clearing. "You have to move," I said. "They're coming."

"Get _off _me," she said, pulling her hand back. Seemed to be a recurring theme with us, the reclaiming of the hand. She was terrifying when she was angry—looked like she could tear the world apart. Even being in love with her, I was afraid to touch her most of the time. "What are you talking about? What are you even doing here?"

"The pack is coming," I clarified, following her as she tried to walk away. I knew I was bugging her, I knew she was two seconds from tearing my head off, but it was important that she get away. From what I'd heard, there would be three or four werewolves coming her way, and that was too many. She was going to get hurt, and that was not okay with me. "They know you're here, they're coming for you right now. You need to run."

"What? Why would _you _care?" Valid question, but actually I had already told her the answer. Her fault if she didn't believe me. "This is some kind of trick."

"Tanya, this isn't a trick," I said, practically pushing her, needing her to _move_, please, _now. _"Seriously! Cross my heart! We need to _move—"_

"Oh, so now it's 'we'?" She turned on me and I jumped back. I was going to have to work on that. Now that the novelty was starting to wear off, it was starting to occur to me what an absolutely dangerous thing she was. She was a _vampire, _she was made for killing things, every part of her, and _she _was more dangerous than most. There was something very wounded about Tanya, for no reason that I could figure out. There was something very likely to snap. "What do _you _have to do with any of this? What do you have to do with me?"

"I'm only going to say it one more time," I told her. I knew what I wanted, but I also knew not to push it. At the end of the day, I wanted my head to still be attached to my shoulders. "I'm going to tell you one more time, and then I won't bring it up again unless you ask me to. I love you."

She was staring at me with helpless anger, confused and upset. "Good God, _why?_"

Because I have to, I almost said. Good thing I didn't—women don't consider genetic coercion all that terribly romantic. But I didn't say it, because at that moment four werewolves burst into the clearing, and they barely seemed to see me. They went for Tanya, circling around her in a split second, blocking her when she went to run. Well, now at least she believed me.

She was already baring her teeth, arms going out to the side, not terribly concerned about the impossible odds. She was _such _a dervish, she was a _fireball, _it was going to get her _killed. _"Get _back!_" I said, grabbing her by the back of her shirt and dragging her behind me. If I didn't stay between her and them, things were going to ugly. Really bloody. "Stay there, all right? You're fine,it's going to be fine."

"You set me up," she was snarling, staying where I put her only because she had nowhere else to go. "You _set me up._"

"Hi guys," I said, ignoring her. Facing down the werewolves who looked pretty annoyed, pretty angry. Totally unable to figure out what I was doing. "We need to talk."


	9. Chapter 9

There was a lot that came pretty naturally just because you were a werewolf—you knew how to run, how to jump, how to bite a vampire's arm off. There was also a lot of stuff you had to learn. Luckily for my pack, we all had Sam. God knows how he'd figured it out by himself, the only werewolf in the continental US for probably more than a year. But when we'd turned he was ready, teaching us werewolf strategy, tactics, telling us what was and was not a stupid thing to do.

One thing he had spent a lot of time telling us about was overwhelming numbers. "We are not in the business of getting ourselves killed," he had told us. "That is not our job. We are not going to be stupid, we are not going to be impulsive. We are not going to get ourselves killed."

At the Battle of Little Bighorn, there were roughly 1800 Native American warriors to Custer's 600—roughly three to one odds. At the Alamo, it was 2,400 Mexicans to 200 Texans—_twelve _to one. We were not supposed to do that. We were not supposed to be the Alamo.

Four to one would have been okay odds if it had been me against four vampires—it wouldn't have been _good _odds, in fact Sam might have disapproved. But I would have been able to at least get out of there alive—werewolves were vampires' natural kryptonite, teeth that could punch straight through them. Four werewolves to one werewolf, though—that was not so good.

"Hey guys," I said warily, keeping my arms stretched out in front of Tanya, boxing out, mantling. "We need to talk."

But of course we couldn't. They were wolves and I was human. They weren't going to go back human anytime soon, and if I went wolf right here, without warning, Tanya was going to bolt. How was this going to work?

Mostly, at this point, I was just trying to keep an eye on Psycho Luke. I recognized Caleb, and I knew he was in charge of the rest of them, and I knew he could keep control of exactly all of them except Luke.

Case in point: as I turned to Tanya to try to convince her that I was not, actually, setting her up, that I was trying to _protect _her—well, I suddenly had to prove it. The rest of the pack was holding their places in the circle, half-crouched but waiting for direction—I could almost see the thoughts flying between them in the air, and _God _I wished I knew what they were saying. This must look pretty bad, I knew—but they were all waiting for orders. All of them but Luke, who showed extreme self-control by waiting for a whole fifteen seconds, and _then _jumping me.

First priority was Tanya—I went from turned partway to her to all the way and I grabbed her and wrapped my arms around her. She was busy yelling at me, she didn't expect it, so she let me get my arms around her and shove her out of the way, quick enough and far enough that Luke went right past us, hitting ground and scrabbling to get his feet back and come back at us.

She was past the shocked stage, struggling to get away from me and doing a damn good job, prying herself out of my grip with a snarl and spinning to find herself face-to-face with Luke, charging straight at her. I sighed and tackled her again just as Luke jumped for her, landing both of us face-first in the snow and Luke missing us by _inches. _The others were finally starting to react, though, and they circled around Luke as he landed this time. They knew we were a threat, but Luke was a threat too. I mean, Paul had _nothing _on this guy. How could they even afford to keep him around, if he was honestly this much trouble?

He did cause a pretty good distraction, though, and this time I wasn't the one to take advantage of it. Tanya was on her feet almost instantly, and to my surprise she was reaching back for me and dragging me up, pulling me through the temporary gap and into the woods.

"What are you—"

"Come _on,_" she said, not letting go of my arm. "I'm not going to wait for you."

"But why—"

"Shut up," she said. "They're coming. We need to run."

And so we ran. She wasn't pulling away, so I kept hanging onto her, barely keeping up. I was sure she was slowing herself down for me, at least a little. I could keep up with a vampire when I was a wolf, but not like this. I was fast but I was _human. _I was sure that the wolves were going to be on us any second. But she seemed to _know_ these woods she kept finding strange cuts and double-backs, so maybe—maybe we weren't dead?

By the time we reached the glacier I couldn't smell them anymore. I hadn't seen a sign of them since we'd broken free, and I could hear them, couldn't smell them. Somehow, we had gotten away.

Tanya was still running, going straight up the side of the glacier like she'd done it a million times. She was kicking footholds in the ice somehow, driving her feet into the glacier, but I couldn't work out how she was doing it and certainly not having much success with it myself. I took about ten steps and then slipped, breaking my hold with her as I slid away and she stayed put.

I slammed into the side of the mountain, not sliding anymore, at least—I braced my feet against the rock and started thinking about how to maybe get back up. There was a crunch of ice near my head, and Tanya was standing next to me, holding out a hand to help me up.

I eyed the hand uncertainly—she had beautiful hands, long fingers like you might see on a piano player—but I still wasn't sure whether they were going to end up around my neck. "What happened to 'leave me alone, I hate you'?" I asked, staying where I was.

She reached down and grabbed me anyway, pulling me upright. "Kick into the ice as you run," she told me, walking away. "Use your momentum to make your steps land a little harder, that's all there is to it."

"Hey," I said, chasing after her. "Hey, Tanya. Wait." I wasn't sure where we were going or why, but I knew that she was going over the glacier—therefore I was going over the glacier, too.

"What's your name again?"

"Embry."

"Embry," she said. At least she didn't make some sort of a comment about my name —usually people did. She didn't raise her eyebrows or laugh, though, and I loved her for it. "So. Why did you save me, Embry?"

Aha. The real question. "I told you why."

"You said you loved me," she repeated. "I didn't believe you."

"Do you believe me now?"

She turned back and gave me a look like she just wasn't sure of anything and least of all me. "You're a _werewolf._"

"Yes," I agreed. "And you're a vampire. Believe me, it's not exactly how I imagined falling in love."

"So sorry to disappoint," she said, stalking away.

Oh crap. I'd offended her again. This love thing was _hard—_even wanting her to be happy with my whole soul, my every single thought, I was still managing to make her unhappy on a fairly regular basis.

"Hey, I didn't mean—"

"I'm not in love with you, you know."

"What?"

"I'm not in love with you."

"Yeah, I—figured that one out," I said. It was actually pretty confusing. I mean, every other person I'd ever seen who had imprinted had been loved right back. I guess no one ever said that was a given—it was probably just more that it was hard to resist that kind of selfless, overwhelming love. Everyone wants to be loved, and not everybody gets it this good. Tanya, of course, seemed to be a special case. "It's okay."

"What do you mean it's okay?"

"Well, it sucks," I said honestly, "but I guess it doesn't change my mind. I'm still going to love you, and I've never had anyone be in love with _me, _so I guess I don't know the difference."

"I should want to kill you," she informed me matter-of-factly. "I _do _want to kill you. I want to kill you right now, I hope you know that."

"Yeah," I said. "We're going to have to work on that."

"I have a better idea," she snapped. "Why don't you just leave me alone?"

"If you wanted me to leave you alone, then why did you pull me out of there?"

"Because I was pretty sure you were about to get torn to shreds," she said, "and you _did _save my life. Figured I should at least return the favor."

"I appreciate it." I really did. I had no interest in being torn to shreds. It was not part of the plan. Speaking of 'torn to shreds'—I couldn't go back to Paskiak now, now that I'd outed myself as vampire-loving traitor guy. I hoped Quil was okay. "Where are we going now?"

"My coven lives just over this glacier," she said, nodding to the steep rise of ice. "A little close to the reservation, I know, but in our defense, we _were _here first."

"You know," I said hopefully. "Back where I live, vampires and werewolves live in peace together?"

"Oh my God, where do you live?" she said dryly. "Shangri-la?"

"La Push, Washington," I corrected.

"That's not natural," she asserted. "We are _meant _to be _enemies._"

"We _are _meant to be enemies. Kind of makes me wonder what's up with the glacier tour, Tanya."

I recognized that voice. I looked up on the ridge of the glacier and saw Rosalie, arms crossed, looking like anextension of the glacier. Carved statue made of ice, radiating cold. "Rosalie."

"_Rose,_" Tanya said in relief, running up to her. "Rosalie, I am so glad to see you. I have had the weirdest day."

"Just coming to find you," she said tautly, her eyes still on me. "Come on. I'll make you hot chocolate or something."

As Tanya slid gratefully over the edge, I followed her—again, I'm really not _trying _to be a stalker. It's just that I was tired and wasn't thinking about it—I mean, I'd been following her for a good twenty minutes now, I just kept following her on autopilot. As I passed Rosalie, though, she took care of that, putting a hand on my chest and shoving me away. I slid backward on the ice, barely keeping my feet.

"Hey!" I protested, trying to catch my balance.

"This is a vampire coven," she said firmly. "You are not invited."

"That's _fine_," I said. "I don't want to have a slumber party or anything. I just need to talk to her. I need to ask her if I can see her again, if I—"

"Embry," she said, her voice close to a snarl, her eyes lit up like firepoker coals. "You need to stay away from Tanya."


	10. Chapter 10

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry about the delay. There's just been a lot going on in my life, including but not limited to: unexpected toaster fires, a fever of a 102, other people's wedding showers, final exams involving Shakespeare, and getting my heart broken into a hundred and twenty seven pieces. Hopefully my life has stabilized now. I think it has. Though if anyone has any craft paste, I'd love to borrow it. I hear that works on hearts.

---

In the Embry Call Cullen Popularity Contest (or ECCPC for short), Rosalie Hale had always ranked pretty low. At first, of course, they were all down on the same level, vampires who I hated and wanted to kill. Then, as I gradually got to know them, some of them started going up in my opinion, as I found out that they were actually pretty nice or cool, that they made a mean Philly cheesesteak despite being dead and all.

But Rosalie? No, Rosalie had always pretty much stayed right down there at the level of being a vampire who I hated and wanted to kill. The only person in her family that I liked less was Jasper, and not even because of any annoying qualities, just because the guy creeped me out. But Rosalie was second to last. I did not _like _her. We did not get along.

However, she was now standing between me and my One True Love, which meant that it was in my best interest to convince her that we did.

"Come on, Rosalie," I said, craning over her shoulder to watch Tanya walk away, leaving footprints in the fine powder of ice dust. "I thought we were cool."

"Yeah, well, that was before you started hitting on my best friend."

"I happen to be in love with your best friend_,_" I told her. "It's none of your business."

"Tanya," Rosalie informed me, "is too nice to tell you no. Somebody has to."

"Oh, she's_ told_ me no—"

"But she didn't make you leave," Rosalie finished. "That's what I'm here for."

She could do it, too. I mean, in a knock-down-drag-out between me and Rosalie, I'd like to think I would win, but the truth was she could at least keep me where I was, if not push me back. She could do it.

"I just want to make her happy," I said lamely. "She doesn't—seem happy."

"She's not," Rosalie confirmed easily. "She's in love with Edward."

I nearly choked and died, right there. "Edward _Cullen?_"

"Yep."

"_Why?_"

"You don't choose who you fall in love with, Embry."

This distracted me, if only temporarily. "What, really? _Nobody _does?"

"You don't choose who you fall in love with," she repeated. "You just look over your shoulder one day and that person catches your eye, and that's just it for you. Just like it happened with Tanya."

God, that sounded a _lot _like imprinting. If this was what I was missing out on, then maybe it wasn't so bad. At least I knew my love would last forever—which could turn out to be a good or bad thing, really. "Doesn't she know he loves Bella?" I asked logically.

"Don't you know Tanya loves Edward?" she asked right back. "Doesn't make a difference, does it? You just keep hoping."

"I guess so," I said unhappily. "Well, if she's in love with him and he doesn't love her back, don't you think she should move on? To me?"

"No," she said firmly. "I don't. She's still dealing with Edward's rejection, and the last thing she needs right now is _men._"

"Well, you know, I'm only eighteen, I'm not really a—"

"Embry," she said, and her eyes were doing the hot coals thing again. "I'm serious. Stay away from her."

Here was what I thought: I thought that love was _exactly _what she needed. I mean, if she was in love with someone who might love her back, then I might have let her go. But I was programmed to do whatever would make her happy, and right now that programming was telling me to keep trying. Because there was _no _possibility of her and Edward, sorry but there wasn't, if you've ever seen the way he looks at Bella then you know what I mean. That meant that it was pretty unhealthy for her to continue to be in love with him, and that the longer she fixated on him the more unhappy she would be. She needed a distraction.

But not right now. The distracting would have to wait till slightly later, because a) from what I'd heard about the Denali coven, they were mostly a bunch of angry girl vampires, and I was going to have to formulate a strategy for not getting killed, b) I was hungry. This second part was a problem, because there wasn't anywhere terribly handy that I could eat. I was pretty much exiled from the only two places within a hundred miles, and it wasn't exactly like I could just pop off to Burger King. I didn't have a wallet. This was one of the inherent problems with being a werewolf, that you couldn't really take these kinds of things with you. Pants, maybe, if you were really thinking straight, but money? ID? It wasn't exactly like we had pockets.

That left me with one possibility, and it wasn't a fun one. You see, technically, while we were in our wolf form, we could…be wolves. We could run down a deer and eat it, if we had to. If we really, _really _had to—because as good as it might taste when we were wolves, raw deer meat didn't settle that well in a human stomach when we had to shift back. Just thinking about it made my face screw up in disgust, but I was sort of out of options. Raw deer meat it was.

I jumped into wolf form, hoping that my claws would at least have better traction on the ice—and they did, but I very quickly stopped worrying about it. That was because the instant I changed, I almost blew out the speakers in my brain. It was like when your radio is turned up all the way and you don't notice as you're turning it on—and the first notes you get are so loud they're on the Richter scale, you're scrabbling to turn it down before you have an aneurism. I could have sworn that every single person in the world was shouting at me in my head at the same time.

Turns out, it was only five or six of them. Sam's bass thoughts came through pretty clearly, but it was Quil who was shouting the loudest, and Sam soon hushed everyone up in favor of him anyway. It was Quil who had the most important things to say.

_Embry, _he said. _Embry, you have to come back. _

_What, to Paskiak? _I asked in surprise. _Um, I don't think so. I kind of may have gotten into a little bit of a faceoff—_

_Oh, I know all that, _Quil said impatiently, _and your dad does, too, and he still wants you to come back. _

_My _dad _wants me to come back? _Well, color me astonished. Not what I was expecting to hear basically ever, in my entire life. _Did he _say _that? _I wouldn't put it past Quil to try to make me feel better.

_He told me to tell you, Embry, _Quil confirmed. _He says he's sorry, and he wants you to come back. _

_Oh, _I said blankly. Still trying to figure out how to react to this. _Okay. Um. Is he—not angry, then? _

_I told him about you imprinting on Tanya, _Quil explained. _I mean, yeah, he was mad and confused at first, everybody was—did you really get between her and the pack? _

_Um, yeah, _I said, like it should be obvious. _They were going to kill her. _

_Well, yeah. She's a vampire. _

_Yes, _I said,_ but she's _my _vampire. _

_Whatever, _Quil said neutrally. _I guess I have to leave, anyway. _

_What?_

_It seems that this pack doesn't really believe in outsiders, _Sam broke in dryly. _They're pretty much kicking Quil out. _

What? _That's ridiculous! So I'm suddenly welcome, and my best friend is out? Man, when I get back there—_

_Embry, _Sam scolded. _We have to be respectful of their traditions. This isn't your pack. _

_We'll see about that, _I grumbled, dodging between trees, leaving my oversized tracks behind me.

_Now, _Sam said. _What's this about you imprinting on a _vampire?

_I don't want to talk about it. _

_---_

It was always a strange feeling to be waited for. Whether it was a surprise party or an after-school road trip, it was always weird to show up and find there was someone expecting you, just waiting for you to get there. It was especially eerie, I discovered, when most of them were people you didn't actually know.

When I got back to Paskiak, I found what must have been half the village circled in front of the woods, like a net to catch me when I came out of them. It was a little alarming, to say the least. I almost turned right around and ran the other way.

_Embry. _I recognized my dad's voice from the huge gray wolf in the middle of the pack—white crescent patch of fur on his muzzle. _I'm glad you're back. _

_Are you really? _I said edgily. _Because it kind of looks like you're all waiting to kill me. _

His laughed in his thoughts, the sound rolling through my head like low thunder. _We're not going to _kill _you, Embry. Don't be silly. _

_I usually try not to be. What's—um…what's up? What's going on? _

_Embry, _he said seriously. _We're staging an intervention. _

_A _what?

_We know you're in love with a vampire, son, _Kenai told me. _We're going to help you._


	11. Chapter 11

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Yeah, sorry. Things are just going to be a little play-it-by-ear for awhile, for the aforementioned reasons (Shakespeare, heartbreak, etc). I swear I'm still going, and writing is cheap therapy these days :), so not to worry. Basically I'm just saying don't worry if I'm not as clockwork as usual. I'm still here :). Thanks for your patience, and your awesome feedback!

---

I was starting to really hate family rooms.

I didn't really have a family room at my house. I don't think my mom really saw a use for them—family rooms were for people who _had_ families, who had a reason to gather together in them and do familyish things like build a fire or play Catchphrase. Basically, if my mom and I wanted to hang out, then we would just go find each other. We had at least four couches in our house, but none of them were together in a room, and none of them were floral.

In my experience at friends' houses and such, family rooms were used for bad news and serious family talks, both of which were considerably awkward. And both times I had been in this particular family room, I had felt a little uncomfortable. It was the family room in my dad's house, and I was sitting here with seven pairs of eyes drilling separate paired holes into me, wondering when anyone would feel like telling me what was up.

There were a lot of people here who I hadn't met, but we weren't exactly doing introductions. They all knew who I was, and that seemed to be pretty much enough. There were a few middle-aged men with scars less dramatic than Kenai's who were watching me with shaped black eyes, and I felt that they were the kinds of people who were not okay with falling in love with vampires. I didn't know any of their names.

There were a group of women clustered around Shila, who had a piece of printer paper clutched in her hands, and they talked in low voices. I wished that Quil was here. I wished that Tanya was here and that she loved me, or at least liked me enough that I could hold her hand while people stared at me with their eyebrows pulled together and their mouths pulled down.

"Shila," Kenai said in a tone of loving impatience. He was sitting closest to me, but he had never looked like the hand-holding type.

"Just a second, Kenai," she said, holding a finger up to him. "Remember, this is new to all of us."

"Maybe we should have looked at this a little earlier," he said mildly. "That's all I'm saying."

She pressed her lips together and cut her eyes at him, and then focused back on me with a warm smile. "Embry, dear," she said. "We've all come here to try to help you. We love you and care about you, and we couldn't help but notice that you have a serious problem."

"I wouldn't exactly call it a problem," I disagreed immediately. No use starting out on the wrong foot. "It's basically the best thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life."

The man on the end snorted derisively, but quietly enough that he could reassume a straight face when I looked over. "Of course you do, dear," Shila's brunette counterpart said pityingly. "You're in love. It must be hard."

"Yeah," I said. "It's hard. And it's awesome."

"You're in love with a _vampire,_" said the man with deep-set, train-tunnel eyes, whose name I knew was Damon because Kenai said it warningly as he spoke, making sure things stayed under control.

"I know." Did they think I didn't know?

"Well, at least we don't have to worry about the part where you admit you have a problem," Shila said briskly.

"Hey, I didn't say it was a problem," I protested. "It's _love, _it's not like it's a meth addiction."

"What else would you call it?" The third man said—his hair was almost all the way gray and he seemed nicer, or at least calmer.

"_Love,_" I repeated. "It's just _love. _I can't do anything about it."

"We know," Kenai said. "That's why we want to help you fix it, in any way that we can."

"What is that supposed to mean?" I demanded.

"Well," Kenai started, with the sort of thin-ice tiptoeing that instantly alerted me to what he might mean. What exactly he had to say that needed so much care.

That was it. He had _better _not be thinking what I thought he was thinking. "Who in this room is imprinted?" I demanded. "Raise your hand."

Some hands went up quickly, some followed a little slower, snaking into the air when they saw it was unavoidable. Nearly every male in the entire family room—including, I was surprised to see, my dad. "You're imprinted?" I hissed at him, as if the rest of the room might not hear.

"Sure am," he said, and nodded across the room to Shila.  
"Oh," I said lamely. I had learned a lot of things that I didn't know in the last week, and it seemed like I had learned all of them at exactly the wrong moments, every single time. "We should probably talk."

"We are talking," he reminded me. "And you have to know, Embry, that comparing our imprints to yours isn't particularly fair. You have to know that your imprint is going to affect people besides you, and that it's _dangerous, _and wrong."

"Honey," Shila waved a hand at him. "Honey, you're skipping a step."

"Shila," he said, very nicely. He was good at being nice and firm at the same time. "Can you give us a minute? All of you? Sorry."

Shila frowned a little, but they all seemed to more or less understand. Shila left her intervention instructions on the table next to Kenai. Kenai wasn't looking at it, though, he was looking at me.

"Here's the deal, Embry," Kenai said. "I'm sorry about this morning, I was surprised to see you here and I didn't handle it well. I want you to know that I love you and I've always wanted to see you, and I want you here." I fought the impulse to now do whatever he wanted. Approval had been unexpected, and it was surprising the way it washed up and overwhelmed me. I remembered in the ninth grade when we'd stumbled on Mr. Ateara's stash of scotch and dared each other to drink it. How difficult it had been difficult to make decisions with our heads full of scotch. "I want to help you."

"You can," I said with difficulty, trying to pick the right words out of the hundred thousands. "You don't have to help me with this. This isn't up for helping."

"Embry," he said, and I knew that I'd interrupted. He hadn't been done. "I'm the Alpha of this pack, and I have a responsibility to them. I haven't seen you since you were a kid—I left when you were a year and a half, and I—" He seemed to be having word problems, too. So that was where I got it. "I guess I was just always thinking about the things I was missing. Soccer games, school plays—I can't imagine who taught you how to _drive, _your mother is a maniac behind the wheel."

"Well it wasn't like there was anyone else," I said stiffly. Approval intoxication or not, he wasn't getting off this easily. Sixteen years. Sixteen _years. _

"I know," he said. He accepted it. "I'm sorry. Michelle never sent me pictures or anything, and she didn't answer when I asked—but she sent me your graduation announcement. Those stupid thick cards with the stupid lettering, and I couldn't imagine who it could be from, I didn't know anyone who was graduating—and it was your name in raised letters, and the picture of you in a robe that was almost too small for you, I could see where it stretched at the shoulders. I know it wasn't fair, but I guess I just couldn't stand not seeing you anymore. I was surprised when you showed up here, but Embry, I want you to know that I'm glad you're here."

I had to swallow twice before I could speak—it wasn't like I was going to cry or anything, that would be dumb, it was just that my throat seemed to be closing up. No big deal. "You said something about a responsibility to your pack," I reminded him. Had to get through this bit first, before all the crying and hugging and playing catch in the backyard.

"They think you're a danger," he told me. "They think you've been betrayed by your own body, and that you need help. I'm inclined to agree."

"So what's the deal—her or you? If I don't give her up, you're going to kick me out again?"

"Embry, I wouldn't do that."

"You already did it once," I pointed out. Clearly this was going to be a troubled relationship. I wished I had paid more attention to the contact phone number at the end of "Oprah".

His mouth opened, then shut, the opened it again. It just took him that long to think of a response, because I was _right. _I recognized it because this was often my reaction to my mom, it usually wasn't _me _being right. I wasn't right about things very often. "Embry," he said firmly. "It doesn't matter what you decide about Tanya. I want you to stay no matter what. I'm just trying to help."

"Oh yeah, well, what was your solution?" I demanded. "There's no way to break an imprint, everyone knows that."

"Well, we could at least help you stay away from her, keep you from getting killed," he said reasonably. "And Damon said—"

"Damon, was that the guy with the crazy eyes?" I asked. I was still trying to get all of this straight. Color-coded maps and diagrams would have been useful.

Kenai paused mid-thought, looking at me blankly. "Damon is your uncle," he said, remembering to his surprise that I didn't know these things. Well, if his son had never met his brother, he really only had himself to blame.

"Oh," I thought about this. "So—do we have some kind of crazy gene in our family, or what?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know," I hedged. "Damon, Luke…"

"Luke is just energetic," Kenai said with a perfectly straight face. "Anyway, I was about to tell you that Damon said there was a way to break an imprint, he said that we could—" His voice broke off like an icicle, snapped at the stem, his eyes suddenly focused on a point over my shoulder.

"What?" This was never a good sign. "What is it?"

"He said there was a—_permanent _way to take care of it. He said we could do what you couldn't do yourself."

"And?" My voice was spiraling up into panic as I started to catch the same realization that had stopped him in his tracks. Something wrong, something wrong. "What did he mean by that?"

"Damn it!" he hissed, standing. "End it _permanently_—don't you get it, Embry? He's going to kill Tanya."

My eyes slashed across the empty room and landed on the chair that Damon had been sitting on. Leaned forward with his arms on his knees, watching me with sinkhole eyes. "Kenai," I said. "Where did Damon go?"

"I sent him out, we needed to talk—"

"No," I said, crossing to him in two strides until I was close enough to hear him breathe, and he was breathing a little harder than usual. His heart was going just a little faster. "But where did he _go?_"


	12. Chapter 12

They had wolves in Alaska.

Don't laugh, it's important. There weren't a ton of places in the US where wolves were still running around—fortunately, Washington happened to be one of them, but we still had to be careful at home. There were wolves, yes, but they weren't huge monster wolves, and they weren't generally known to hang out in reservations or campsites. We had to watch ourselves, we had to not be seen.

Alaska was one up from that: they had wolves, they were big wolves, and we were on a national reserve, so they were expected wolves. If some tourist snapped a shot of Caleb or Kenai running across a river or something, it was just going to end up in a scrapbook instead of the five o'clock news.

Plus, all of Paskiak _knew _about the wolves, which was again one up on La Push. There was a huge safe zone here, and it was making me jealous. I wished _I _could just shift and run after a problem whenever I wanted, back home. If I'd been sitting in school or something when I found out that someone was trying to kill the girl I loved, I would have had to wait, and sneak, and run human to the edge of the forest, things like that. Up here, I could just kick off my shoes and go.

So I did. Kenai actually beat me to it, jumping neatly through the open window as a white-scarred wolf before I could even get myself turned around, but I followed him straight out. He was, after all, the one who actually knew the way. Damon was in his pack, though apparently not a helpfully contributing member. In perspective to what was going on in Paskiak, I was actually sort of starting to miss our pack at home. Dealing with Paul or Leah was a cakewalk, compared to this.

I only had scent to go on, Kenai had thoughts and intentions, so when he took a sharp left towards the river, I scrabbled to make the same turn—if I'd been a car, I would have left tiremarks all down the riverbank. We caught sight of Damon in seconds, his silhouette weaving in and out of trees—and another shadow wolf form, slipping along behind him. Great. Even odds. I wondered, if it really came down to it, whose side Kenai would be on.

Kenai pounced to the top of a river boulder and slid down the other side, cutting straight in front of the two running wolves. Again I was left scrambling to follow—anything else I could say about my dad, he sure as hell knew his way around a national reserve. I'd _never _seen anyone move like this, not me not Sam, not Jacob who was supposed to be some kind of revelatory natural. Jacob couldn't move like this.

He cut in front of them with a baseball slide, blocking them so squarely that they had to pull up, backpedaling not to hit him, no time to change course. _Hey guys, _Kenai thought to them as I trotted in behind him. _Where do you think you're going?_

_Where do you _think _we're going? _snarled Damon's voice, and now that I looked, the other wolf was small and gray and twitchy. Awesome. Psycho Luke. _We're going to the coven, Kenai. _

_Did I tell you that you could go to the coven? _he growled, stepping in closer, getting muzzle to muzzle.

_You _said _we should solve the problem, _Damon argued. _Now I don't know whether you've got the guts to _do _it, but based on past history I would have to say no. So we were going to take care of us. You should thank us, Kenai. _

Holy crap. If I had been human, my mouth would have been hanging open. This was the way they talked to their Alpha? Anyone said something like that to Sam, and they weren't going to be walking so well the next day. _Luke, go home, _Kenai said, not taking is eyes from Damon.

_Dad! I'm just—_

_Luke. _Now that wasn't even Alpha Voice. That was Dad Voice.

I could hear him grumbling as he turned away, but he was going. That was good. It meant that there was at least one person in the world that could control Luke, and that was really good news. Now I just had to hope there was someone who could control Damon. And hopefully that person was my dad.

_Damon, you need to go home, too, _he said steadily. I stayed quiet behind him, trying not to upset the delicate power balance he was building. _You're not thinking straight. We'll talk about this. We'll discuss it, but we are not going to charge off and kill someone else's imprint. That is not okay._

_God, you have gotten so _soft, Damon yelled. _I don't understand how you're still Alpha, Kenai. There is a coven of _vampires, _right over that glacier, and—_

_If you have a problem with me leading this pack, Damon, _Kenai said, suddenly much more threatening with a much lower pitch than I'd ever heard. It occurred to me suddenly that Kenai was really _big—_he towered over Damon, staring down at him, had a good three inches on him. _You know you only have to ask. _

Oh boy. Power struggles. It was all getting pretty Lion King, actually, and I did not approve. I'd never known my dad's side of the family, never known any of these people existed. I was still trying to decide whether or not that was a good thing.

_No? _Kenai said. _Then _go home.

Now there was the Alpha Voice. Even though it wasn't directed at me I could still feel the pressure of it on Damon, like hands on your shoulders pressing you to your knees. Damon was a jerk, but he wasn't Alpha yet. He was out of here.

Kenai kept his eyes on Damon as he turned and slunk away, but I had no doubt that he wouldn't be leaving if he didn't have to. This seemed like a long-standing problem. Maybe their mom had always given Kenai the extra cookie, as a child—and if so, I don't think I could blame her.

Well, that wasn't my problem. It could potentially, at any point, _start _becoming my problem. But at the moment I still basically only had one thing to do. _So, _I said. Not sure whether this was a good time or not, but also didn't care. _I'm going to go see Tanya. _

_Really? _Suddenly he was very distracted from Damon. _I thought we had decided to work on this, Embry. _

_No, that was what you decided, _I said blithely. My mom tried that one all the time, I knew how to handle it. _What I decided was that I'm in love with her. _

_Well, if that's what you really want— _Now he was trying the step-back-and-sigh guilt trip, and I knew that one too.

_It is, _I said, already starting to edge away. _See you later. _

And then I ran away before it could occur to him to stop me physically. He would get over it. He would get used to the idea, I just had to make sure he didn't have any other option.

I wanted to be around my dad, but I was still sort of afraid of him. He just—had a lot of power, here, he had _all _the power, and I sort of hated the idea that there was someone who could say two words and take me _down, _make me curl up in a corner for the rest of my life. Was that just the definition of family, or what? I guess I didn't have a lot of experience in the area.

He didn't come after me, which was good and bad. I didn't want him to stop me, but it would have been nice for him to at least try, you know? Oh well. Tanya. It was easy to distract myself with thinking about her. I hadn't seen her in what—four hours? I was going to do something about that.

Even I could feel the cold today. The sun was directly overhead but it was doing nothing for us—it was sheer cold light fiberglassing straight to the bones. There wasn't light for as long here, I had noticed—I'd seen the sun going down at five, I'd seen it come up at ten, but for now it was glaring off the snow straight to me.

Alaska was Christmas. Alaska was the inside of a snowglobe, frosted white with the scent of pine so strong around you that you couldn't smell anything else. There was perfection here—there were actually places that hadn't been touched, ever, by anyone. And there was Tanya. I felt that Alaska had been made for her, that she was some kind of human manifestation, an Alaskan elemental. Chilly and beautiful and slightly hostile, but _worth _it. Gold and oil.

I had headed straight for the coven—yeah, I know, real smart idea—but about halfway up the glacier I caught her scent. Even through the pine, even miles out I could tell where she was by now—the specific sharp scent of her, perfect sweet bitten sugar-smell. I hoped that wasn't creepy, and I hoped she didn't mind. I just wanted to see her.

The scent got stronger as I turned west into the woods, towards the mountain. It was strange to be right up to it now, running over the foothills. Denali was one of those things that was so big and incredible that you almost _had _to relegate it to the background, couldn't think about it or your head would explode. Did you know that it's actually technically taller than Mount Everest, the tallest from base to tip? Because it is. It is just that big.

I found her there at the base of it, right where the shadow starts to fall from the mountain face. She wasn't standing in the shadow, though—this was Alaska, this was Denali National Park, they didn't _have _to hide. She was standing in the edge of sunlight and when I saw her I stopped cold in my tracks. She was crouched over in the snow and every inch of her skin was diamond dust. She was on fire, she was fireworks, she was glitter and glass.

She was so beautiful that I about died. In fact, she was so beautiful that it took me a good few minutes to realize exactly what she was doing.

Christmas Alaska with two of the three colors there already—white snow green trees, and suddenly there was red. Blood on the snow, blood on her hands and arms and shoulders. Tanya bent over a glass-eye deer with her hands cradling its head and neck, leaning to drink from it.

I stood there in shock for five seconds, ten seconds—fifteen seconds before she pulled away and noticed me—turning around to face me with blood on her mouth and bleeding down. I took one look at her and I ran.


	13. Chapter 13

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 100 reviews! Best day of my life! Thank you so much, guys, you have no idea how much your feedback fuels me. Weird-flavored Christmas Hershey kisses for everyone! Only, you will have to imagine them, because no way I am giving you my Hot Cocoa kisses for real…

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I guess just haven't seen a lot of blood, in my life. There's not really much excuse for this, seeing as I am both a werewolf and a teenage boy, but there it is. Even with all the vampire hunting and such, I'd never really sustained any serious injuries, and if any of my friends got hurt they were going to heal pretty quickly, right? Very little blood.

I just wasn't really expecting to walk in on Tanya covered in blood from head to toe. It's probably my fault, I probably should have been thinking about this, considering that she was, yes, a _vampire. _Vampires drank blood. I should be grateful that I'd fallen for one that had sworn off humans, or it would be that much worse. Still. I hadn't expected it, and it was just—a _lot _of blood.

Running away might have not been the best idea, but here was the big surprise—she chased me. Her eyes met my eyes in the last instant before I ran off, and when we broke eye contact, she came after me. It was probably at least partially to do with hunter instinct—I was a running animal, and that meant she should come after me. But she _kept _chasing me—even after I stopped running.

She almost ran straight into me as I stopped suddenly, trying to figure out what I was doing before I continued doing it. I loved her. What was I doing? I loved her. But also she was a vampire. None of it really seemed to connect.

She skidded to a stop behind me, looking as totally unsure about what she was doing as I was. "Embry?" she said after a minute, ducking her head forward like she could maybe see me in there if she just looked closer.

_Tanya, _I said, but of course she couldn't hear me. We were having an essential breakdown in communications, here, and it was called sometimes I was a werewolf and couldn't form words. Something would have to be done.

"Embry, is that you?" she hazarded. "You're not trying to kill me, so I'm guessing it's you…"

_Hold on, _I said unnecessarily, and darted into a stand of trees. Hopefully I would just have time to shift and get my pants on before she chased me back, and I did, I got back to her and she hadn't even moved. It had been a strange couple of days for all of us.

I stood there across from her, bare feet in the snow, arms crossed over my chest. I kept a polite distance, and I tried not to look at the blood on her arms. "Hi, Tanya," I said.

She brought her sleeve up to her mouth and wiped the blood away, looking almost self-conscious. "Hi," she said shortly. "Listen…I'm sorry you had to see—"

"No," I said quickly. I didn't really want to talk about that, really I didn't. Blood on the snow. "No, it's fine. I knew what you were."

"It's not fine, Embry, don't _lie _to me." She sounded a little frustrated. And still guilty. "I look like I took a shower in blood."

"Can you please _not _say that?" I said, pained. "That's gross and weird."

"Yes it is. It's gross and weird," she persisted. "I've been telling you all along, kid, there are _really _good reasons why you shouldn't be in love with me. Do you understand that now?"

"Yes."

She seemed a little surprised by this answer. I suppose I had been rather persistent, and the quick fold was out of character. "Oh," she said. "Well."

"But it doesn't change anything."

"You mean you're still in love with me."

"Yep. I'm still in love with you."

"But you don't want to be anymore."

She had me there. I was starting to remember my old thoughts of chains, wondering if there was a way to start resenting this. I mean, this was it, for me, forever. "It doesn't matter," I said. Better not get into that. She _was _wonderful. I _did _love her. I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life regretting, and I _was _going to be with her. Whether I liked it not—so I was going to _like _it. "I love you."

She took a quick step toward me, and I jumped instinctively back—hadn't quite gotten over that one yet. Unfortunately, that seemed to prove some kind of point. "You don't love me," she said. "You're still afraid of me."

"Well, yeah," I said, sticking my hands into my back pockets. "I mean…you just ate a deer."

"You haven't even touched me yet," she pointed out. "How is this going to work?"

"No I haven't," I agreed. "I thought you might have a problem with that." Then when she didn't immediately reply—because I was desperate, I jumped on it. "Do you have a problem with that?"

"I don't know," she said, brushing the hair out of her face—which was _wayyyy _better than an instant 'yes'. "At first I didn't think you were serious—I'm pretty sure you're serious."

"I am," I said simply. "But right now you are covered in blood."

"I'm not going to apologize for that," she said. "Your fault for falling in love with me, I am _not _going to apologize. I mean, sucks for you, but—"

"What do you mean, sucks for me?" I wanted to know. "It's not like you're the plague."

"Tell that to Edward Cullen."

I was wondering when this was going to come up. I had sort of been hoping never. Edward Cullen—I don't know. I didn't have a problem with him, never really had, but the idea of him as competition was distressing. And the idea that he'd ever shut the door on Tanya? Well, that just made me mad. "I will, if you want me to," I said. "I will go down there right now and tell him he's a total moron. I don't understand how anyone could ever say no to you, you're—" Wild hand gestures. "Perfect."

"Glad you think so," she said, almost impatient. The broken-hearted girl who's sick of being told she's amazing when she knows she's not amazing to the one person who matters. "You seem to be pretty nice yourself."

"You mean that?" Thrill-meter right off the charts.

"For a werewolf."

Ha. I was wearing her down. "So what does that mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything," she said, puzzled. Still didn't understand how my mind was working when it came to her.

"Can I see you?" I tried instead. "Is it okay if I'm—around sometimes?"

"No," she said automatically.

"Tanya." I hadn't said her name very often. I loved the way it sounded—exotic, but not Alaskan, and it made me wonder again just exactly who this girl was. "Edward isn't coming back."

She had probably spent the better part of a year avoiding hearing those words. She hadn't been expecting them and she didn't want them from me. She turned to go but I didn't want her to, and I reached out without thinking. My fingers wrapped around her wrist.

We froze. She was halfway to leaving me and I was letting her, at all but one point. My hand on her wrist. We had not expected this. "I'm not afraid of you," I hardly knew what I was saying, certainly hadn't meant to say it. "I'm not afraid of you."

We were speaking in whispers without knowing why, we were fragile like things made of ice. We knew we shouldn't touch this. "Yes you are," she said.

"No I'm not," I said, and I kissed her.

I guess I just wanted to prove her wrong. That's the thing about boys, we just literally can't say no. If it sounds like a challenge, you do not even have to _worry, _it is _done. _Plus there was the fact that I'd been wanting to kiss her every second since the first time I'd seen her. There was also that.

She was very slender, in the way that a birch tree is slender or a ballerina. I'd seen how strong she was but still when my arm slid around her waist she felt like a doll or falsity, impossibly tiny but if she had wanted to she could have stopped me. She didn't stop me. I'd been nearly positive she would kill me the second I pulled her in, but she didn't. I was still alive and kissing her, and—was she kissing me back? She tasted like blood, there was blood on her mouth and my mouth now, tasted just like when you got hit or bit your lip and copper burst onto your tongue in a sudden, hateful way.

It was the best moment of my life.

It was interrupted by someone trying to kill me.

Which was, you know…getting a little old.


	14. Chapter 14

Here was my understanding of vampires, based on my admittedly limited experience: all vampires were blonde. I mean, you had, what, the Cullens who were all shades from blonde to reddish blonde. Rosalie was blonde. Tanya was blonde. As far as I was concerned, they were _all _blonde, every last one of them. Maybe it was some kind of master-race thing, or—I don't know. I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about it.

My theory was supported by the fact that the vampire who was currently attacking me was also blonde. It was a different blonde, a sort of silverfish blonde with a sharp chin-length cut, sharp facebones that meant business and looked good angry. And right now, she _was _angry—she was angry at ­­_me. _One minute I was kissing Tanya, and the next I was knocked flying, sprawling into the snow with this new woman pinning me, hands clawing for my face. I grabbed her by the wrists and, naturally, tried to prevent this.

"Hey!" I yelled. Trying to figure out how best to communicate that I was nice and harmless, that I was a cool guy really once you got to know me and that wouldn't happen if I got strangled. In ten words or less. "Tanya!"

And because of our brand new connection that we had just established, Tanya was actually the right person to call. "Irinia!" she protested, putting a hand on the woman's shoulder, trying to pull her away. "What are you doing? Do you know who this _is?_"

"Do _you _know who he is?" Maybe it was just the stress of the situation, but her voice was nails on chalkboard. Fairly high soprano not helped by anger and homicidal intent. "Didn't Rosalie _tell _you? He's one of the La Push werewolves, Tanya!"

"Yeah, I am," I choked, trying to keep enough space between her hands and my throat that breathing was still working out. "Can we—talk about this later? We can all sit down and talk about it—"

"Yeah, La Push, _so what?_" I don't think Tanya cared that much about me, I don't think she was necessarily defending me. She was mostly just confused, and hey, she wasn't alone there. "It's just some stupid town in Washington—"

"In _Washington, _Tanya!" Irina yelled. "Werewolves in Washington! _Laurent." _

Laurent. The name rung a bell. Not a big one, though, and not a big enough one to know why this chick was trying to kill me. I mean, vampires usually tried to kill me, that was to be expected, but usually it didn't seem so _personal. _

It certainly seemed to mean something to Tanya, though, because she stepped back with her hand going up to her mouth, somehow managing to go paler than she had been. "Oh my God," she said. "Laurent. I didn't—"

"That's right you didn't," Irina berated her. Good thing she was busy chewing Tanya out, actually, because it distracted her from immediately killing me. I moved around a little under her weight, testing for weaknesses in her hold. Gotta get out of here somehow, and maybe with less help from Tanya than I'd thought. "Some _werewolf _bats his eyes at you and suddenly you forget he killed your _friends?_"

Okay, I really needed to figure out who this Laurent guy was. I was racking my brains for the vampires I'd killed, it hadn't been _that _many—there was Victoria and her newborns, and then that other guy. I guess I'd never known his name, but I hadn't known any of the newborns either, it could be _anyone. _"Is that true?" Tanya's eyes had suddenly gotten darker—I already knew she could look scary, but this was a new high. "Did you kill him?"

"Would you believe me if I told you that I honestly didn't know?"

"_Laurent,_" Irina snarled, pushing me deeper into the snow. "Tall vampire, dreadlocks? He just came down to _talk, _and you _killed _him."

"Oh," I said, losing my last hope that this all might be just a big misunderstanding. I remembered Laurent. I remembered snapping my teeth into his arm. "He wasn't just talking, you know, he tried to—"

"Shut _up,_" she said, lifting my head and shoulders and slamming then back down into the ground. Which was frozen. It was called permafrost. It _hurt. _

"Tanya," I tried one last time. I looked at her and there was another person slipping up over her shoulder—_another _gorgeous blonde vampire. This was getting ridiculous.

"Kate." The way Tanya spoke, sounding shellshocked—whatever this Laurent thing was, it was a big deal, it was a bigger deal than I'd thought, it had Tanya staring and backing slowly away. "He's—"

"I know, Tanya," the new woman said, a hand on her shoulder seemingly more to pull her back than to comfort her. "You should go."

"Tanya," I said. I hadn't been all that worried with just one vampire—I mean, sure, she was mad, but it was just her, she couldn't kill me. _Two _angry girl vampires though. Not good. "Tanya, no. Don't leave me here."

I tried to understand why she was turning to leave. I couldn't be mad at her, it wasn't in me, and maybe she'd _known _this guy, of course she'd known him hadn't he lived here? I'd killed one of her friends—and now she was remembering exactly who and what I was. We had been trying so very hard to forget but this wasn't forgettable. She was leaving me.

I tried to watch her as she went, but I got a little—distracted. Because Irina was trying to kill me again. Not that she'd ever really stopped, but now she was _really _going at it, breaking through my hold to get her hands around my neck, closing off my breathing. Tanya was not going to help. Time to think about other options.

I immediately went into a quick shift, had to be a werewolf if I was going to fight vampires, but it was the strangest thing. I got about two seconds into a change, and all of the sudden it just—shuddered to a stop. I wasn't changing. It wasn't like it was _complicated, _it wasn't even physical, it was just a thrown mental switch, it had never been a _problem. _I couldn't shift. I couldn't make it happen.

"Oh, yeah, sorry, forgot to tell you," Irina said. "We have these special talents, us vampires…Laurent had to _deal _with you as a big, bad wolf, you didn't give _him _a chance. But when you're around me, things are going to be a little more…_even._"

I couldn't shift. I couldn't shift, she was somehow stopping me, I couldn't do it. Suddenly, this situation had gotten really, really bad. I put a hand on the side of her head and _pushed, _tumbling her sideways off me because the _only _thing I could think to do right now was run.

I didn't make it two steps. I was running barefoot through the snow, just getting into stride and then suddenly Kate was in front of me—I _hated _the way they moved, we were fast but you could see us, and vampires, they just—_appeared. _She popped up in front of me and put her hands on my shoulders and threw me back into a tree, hard enough that I could feel it splinter, that I could feel myself splinter,I couldn't _handle _this human.

I dropped just in time to miss Irina's fist, slamming straight over my head and four inches into the tree, she wasn't messing _around. _There was something wrong with my shoulder where I'd hit, and I needed time to heal it. I was really not getting that time. Her punch missed by a mile but she learned from her mistake, and her next sweeping kick caught me right in the ribs, another crack, and I'd broken enough bones to know the feeling exactly when it happened. I had to get out of here.

"He was my _mate_," she was yelling, I had to admit I wasn't paying a ton of attention, I was a little busy trying not to get stomped to death. "I _loved _him!"

"I'm _sorry!_" I really was, I felt bad. I never thought of vampires as having mates, having hearts that could potentially be broken. Also I felt bad because she was still kicking me—I grabbed her foot as it came down this time and pushed her away—I might be human, but I was still pretty strong, and she went _over. _

I could almost deal with one of them at a time, too bad there had to be _two. _I managed to get back on my feet with one hand on my ribs to make sure they weren't going to fall out or anything. Kate chose to take this opportunity to grab me by the throat and shove me back into the tree, snapping my head back so that it slammed into the trunk. And here was a feeling I hadn't had to deal with in a long time—I was pretty sure I was about to pass out. She hadn't taken her hand off my throat and it was all starting to get really quite fuzzy, blackening around the edges like an oil spill, seeping in. It was all going black.

And because I was Lovesick Imprint Guy, my last thought was of Tanya. I had just enough time to wonder if she would miss me if I died. And to decide probably not.

After that it was basically just black.


	15. Chapter 15

It was difficult to tell at first, whether I was dead or alive. In my defense, I have only seventeen years' experience being alive, and no experience whatsoever on the other side. So really, how was I supposed to know? When I first opened my eyes, it was pitch dark, so that pointed towards either dead or blind. Also I was in pain, which you would think meant I was still alive, but then again it was possible I was just in Hell. My mother and I weren't intensely religious, but we did go to church when we woke up early enough on Sundays, and I _had _killed a few people. I don't know if it counted if they were vampires.

Just as my mind was leading me off into some truly weird thoughts (maybe I had a concussion?), a door opened, cutting a slice of light into what I now saw was a bedroom. "Oh, you're awake," said an unfamiliar voice, and reached for a light switch.

I shut my eyes against the light and sat up quickly—huge mistake. Instantly, I felt like someone had stabbed me through the chest with a sword—of course, I'd never actually been stabbed by a sword, but I wasn't going to rule it out for the future, my life tended to get pretty crazy. I _had _broken a few ribs before, though, and after the initial yelling in pain and falling back onto the bed, I recognized the specific pain for what it was. Stupid ribs. Stupid broken bones. They usually healed pretty quickly for us, knitting up in anywhere from minutes to days, but ribs were the worst. It wasn't like you could exactly keep them still.

"Oh, sorry," said Unfamiliar Person—I looked up and saw that it was an extremely pretty black-haired girl who was now rushing to my bedside, hands out as if she meant to restrain me. Really no need. I wasn't trying _that _again. "Sorry, sorry. I didn't know you were going to try to sit up, your ribs—"

"I noticed," I said through gritted teeth, trying to breath without moving my lungs too much. Turned out this was tricky. "How did this—?"

I got halfway through asking how it had happened before I suddenly, forcefully _remembered. _This happened sometimes. It was called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I had read eight pages about it once while I was waiting for my mom to pick me up at the doctor's office. Unlike other forms of memory loss, like repression or false memory (which I had also read about—it had been a long wait), it _was _temporary, and pretty much just hit you whenever it felt like.

Just now, for example, I was suddenly remembering a tall blonde vampire named Irina, and the expression on her face, and being thrown into a birch tree hard enough that I hope they'd checked for splinters. Yikes. I still seemed to be missing part of the memory still, though, because I couldn't for the life of me remember how I'd gotten out of there.

"Yeah," she said sympathetically, sitting down next to me on a stool by the bed. She looked seconds from patting me on the head, and good _Lord, _she was beautiful. It was strange the way I noticed her beauty, though, sort of a clinical and detached examination, like a person looking at a piece of art. Before I could stop myself I was comparing her to Tanya, her hair her nose her neck—comparing her with Tanya as the ultimate pinnacle. I would never be attracted to anything but blondes, ever again, I knew _that _for sure. "It's lucky I got you out of there."

"You pulled me out?" I asked in surprise. "I don't even know you."

She seemed to take this as an invitation. "McKenna Keijo," she said, reaching out for a handshake with a sudden, brilliant smile. "Caleb and I were out skiing, and I heard you in the valley, and—well, let's just say it was lucky we got there when we did."

"Skiing?" I frowned. There was something that wasn't clicking about that answer, couldn't pinpoint what it was. "How did you get them to leave?" Last thing I remembered, those two women had been pretty furious. I would have thought it would take a crowbar and a welding torch.

"Oh, you just have to know how to handle them," she said vaguely. "Stay still." And suddenly she had her hands on my chest, pressing lightly, frowning in concentration.

I was trying not to make any sudden movements, but this was a bit much—I tried to scoot backwards in the bed without jarring my bones too much, what did she think she was _doing? _"Hey!" I objected. "Watch it! We just _met, _you should probably buy me dinner first—"

"I'm a registered nurse," she raised her eyebrows at me. "Who do you think's been taking care of you?" And with that same professional, difficult-to-challenge briskness, her hands slid under my shirt, her fingers very cold against my skin.

I let out a small yelp but didn't try to stop her this time—she felt along my ribcage, fingers quick and light. It wasn't hard to figure out which ones were broken. She probably had a better idea than me of what to do with them, though.

"Wow," she remarked with the same briskness. "You been working out?"

"We're all like this," I said, nonplussed. I was unflirtable. "You live in a village full of werewolves, you should know that."

"I guess I just never had a reason to look," she said breezily.

I eyed her suspiciously as she pulled back, jotting something in her notebook. "Did my dad put you up to this?" I demanded. Gorgeous girl, nice, funny, safe Paskiak stock—and she just _happened_ to be there in front of my eyes when I woke up? Sketchy.

"Yes," she admitted easily. "But I didn't mind."

"Awesome," I grumbled, struggling to sit up despite her disapproving noises. "Fantastic. DAD!" I yelled toward the open door. "_DAD!_"  
"Technically it was Shila," Hot McKenna informed me between yells. "I assumed the order came through Kenai, though. Most things do."

"The _order?_" I choked. "I'm so flattered."

"Oh, don't be offended," she scolded, trying to push me back down and failing miserably. "I'm sure I would have tried something anyway. The girls are all talking, Embry—you're very cute."

"Flattered," I repeated firmly. "Charmed. But taken."

"By that vampire?" she asked shrewdly. "Doesn't look like she wants you, does it?"

I froze.

I knew this. I knew it already. I guess I just hadn't expected to someone to come out and say it like that.

"When we found you, you were about dead," she told me, her voice low and unsympathetic. "Three broken ribs, broken shoulderblade, broken collarbone, fractured wrist. She would have let them kill you, Embry."

"She just needs time," I said automatically. Most of my brain was still frozen along with my body.

"She doesn't need time. She needs to be put out of her misery. She's a monster."

I was finding this girl less and less attractive with every word out of her mouth. She was mean, and I didn't want to talk to her anymore.

"How long till I'm healed?" I couldn't exactly escape, but I could change the subject.

She snapped right back into nurse mode, exactly I'd hoped. "Now that you're awake, it shouldn't be that much longer. You were out for a good ten or eleven hours—your body did most of the work then. I'd say—by dinnertime?"

Wow, had I really been out that long? The sunlight was no help, it was already heading for the horizon. Stupid weird Alaska. "Which is when?"

"Six o'clock." The answer from the door, and in a bass voice—Kenai, head and shoulders in the room, as if he'd just been passing by. "Hey, Embry. Good to see you up."

I glared at him suspiciously—once McKenna had mentioned Shila's name, it had pretty much let Kenai off the hook, but there was still a chance he'd been in on the scam. Surely he wouldn't be dumb enough to think he could lure me away from an imprint? "Six o'clock?"

"Yeah," he confirmed, "and there's a Council meeting right after."

"But I don't have to go to that, right?" I'd been to those things before—a bunch of old guys sitting around smoking pipes and swapping fishing stories. Not my idea of after-dinner fun.

"Actually," he said awkwardly, shoving his hands into his pockets. "It's kind of—about you."

"The Council meeting?" I said in surprise. Bad idea. Surprise seemed to be bad for rib fractures. "What, are they deciding whether to call out the firing squad?"

Hi answer came a little too slow, and I got a little worried. "No, no, of course not," he assured me. "They just want to talk to you."

Sure they did. Just your run-of-the-mill Alpha's-illegitimate-son vampire imprinting. Who could possibly have a problem with that? And so into the uncomfortable silence, I said, "Six o'clock it is."


	16. Chapter 16

I don't think I realized how big Kenai was until I started borrowing his clothes. I mean, I'm big too, I'm almost freakishly big, and I'm pretty sure I'm still growing. Now at least I knew where I'd gotten it.

When I came out of my room in his jeans and his sweatshirt, Kenai took one look at me and said, "Huh."

The jeans fit okay—it was the sweatshirt that was the problem. It was like when I was ten and my mother bought all my clothes too big, because according to her I was shooting up like a weed, and she was sick of buying new things every two weeks. I was tall enough for the sweatshirt but nowhere near wide enough, I didn't have Kenai's shoulders—never thought I'd say this, but maybe I'd grow into it.

"Oh, Embry," Shila said warmly, crossing the room to hug me or something. I really didn't want to be hugged by her. I mean, it was silly and unfair, but she wasn't my mom, and I was basically never going to forgive her for that.

She seemed not to have any idea of this, though, and she wrapped her arms around my waist with no hesitation, telling me that I looked "darling", and to come to dinner. I was so thrown off my being dubbed "darling"—pretty much the kiss of death for any teenage boy—that I didn't notice for awhile that she was leading me outside.

"We're eating out there? Are you all insane?" I swear there was two feet of snow on the ground—not exactly picnic weather.

"We always eat outside on Council nights," she informed me. "It's the only place we can all fit at the same time. Don't worry about us humans, we've got people to keep us warm."

I tried not to think too hard about that one.

"Um, no, it's fine," I decided suddenly. "I need to get some more rest, I think I'll just go back to the room and—"

"Now that you're feeling better," she said tactfully. "it's probably best for you not to go back into that room,"

"Why?"

"Well, it's Luke's room." And suddenly it all made sense. "He wasn't wild about you using it in the first place, but you were injured, and we told him to be charitable."

"Uh huh. Charitable." I wished they'd told me this _before—_I'd been taking my life in my hands every minute I laid in that bed.

I let her pull me outside. No way I was going back in that room now. This was Psycho Luke we were talking about, and he scared me. I could admit it. Lots of things scared me, including but not limited to: Psycho Luke, Damon, the possibility that Kenai might not love me, Tanya, the possibility that _she _might not love me, and centipedes.

I don't know. Something about the way they moved.

It was so…_summer camp _out there. A hole scraped out of the snow where someone had miraculously conjured a fire to life, and everyone gathered around it in a circle, firelight on their faces and plates balanced on their knees. They all turned to look at me as I walked into the circle, and I did not like to be looked at. I sat down quickly, with Kenai sitting down on my left side—and before I even sat down all the way, McKenna was slipping into the empty chair on my right. I swore quietly to myself. She was _good. _

Before I could try to remaneuver, Shila handed me a plate and took the other seat. The absolutely second-to-last seat, and I could see Luke glaring across the fire, his eyes daring me to take the last one, right next to him. My eyes said something back like, no thank you, I'd rather chew on broken glass.

"Embry," McKenna pounced immediately. "How are you? Those ribs heal okay?" And before I could stop her, she had her hands on my chest again, feeling for more than just fractures.

"Hey! Cut that out!" I swatted her hands away, nearly knocking over the plate full of roast beef and potatoes. "I'm _fine. _I'm completely healed."

"Just doing my job."

"No," I fumed. "A job is where you get paid, and I am sure as hell not paying you."

"Embry, I think you just called me a prostitute," she said, her eyes sparkling.

"What?" I snapped. "That doesn't even make any sense! Prostitutes get paid! And can we please not have this conversation with my _dad sitting two feet away?_"

"I haven't been a part of your life, Embry," Kenai said solemnly. "If you've gotten mixed up in prostitution, I have only myself to blame."

I was starting to feel a little flustered. "Dad—please never say that again, it's weird and gross," I instructed. "McKenna—stop flirting with me. I'm engaged."

"No you're not."

"I'm practically engaged," I corrected, not missing a beat. I had just wanted to see if I could get away with it.

"Not if I have anything to say about it," she smirked.

"McKenna! You can't change this!" It came out quite a bit harsher than I had intended—I guess I'd underestimated how much it bothered me that she was still here. "Why would you want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with you?"

I saw her go flinteyed, sparks striking off of her. "I don't know," she said coolly. "I could ask you the same question."

I had nothing to say to that, of course. I was doing the same thing, I was the same as her, and I really didn't intend to stop. McKenna said Tanya would let me die, and if that was true I guess that was okay. She was hurt and angry and in pieces, and if my death was a necessary step in her healing, then fine. Imprinting meant that I was what was best for her, automatically. I changed my shape to fill her holes. If she needed to kill me then she could do it. But that wasn't what she needed.

I was about to argue all of this, when a man stood and walked to the fire. He stood next to it, right in its light, his face yellowed by it like a kid telling ghost stories.

"If I could have everyone's attention! We're going to go ahead and start the Council meeting now." He was basically just a silhouette of a man, but his voice was kind of—epic. It was a voiceover voice, the kind of thunderclap bass that you heard on movie promos announcing that The End. Of The World. Is Coming.

I wasn't too transfixed to notice what he was saying, though, and I elbowed Kenai. He did not expect this. I doubt he got elbowed very often. "Why are they having Council? Everyone's still here."

"Well, everyone's supposed to be here," Kenai explained in a tone that said that this was the way it always happened. Weird. "Everyone gets a say, of course."

"But then how do you ever get anything decided?"

He smiled. "Some of us get more say than others."

"I know there were some smaller issues we wanted to discuss, but before we get to those, we have a problem we need to resolve. Embry Call, could you please stand up?"

I about died right on the spot. No, I could NOT stand up. Absolutely not. It wasn't stage fright so much as standing-up-in-front-of-people-who-you-mostly-don't-know-and-who-plan-to-stare-at-you fright. I think _everyone _has that. But they were already staring at me, so I stood, and tried to convince my knees to keep holding me.

"I'm sure many of you have met him by now," Speaker Man continued, but that wasn't true. I recognized a few faces here and there—Damon, Psycho Luke, Kira from the first day—but the vast majority were unfamiliar. I couldn't even seem to locate Caleb, which was unfortunate. Caleb had a calming face. "This is Kenai's son from before his imprint. And speaking of imprinting—Embry has a problem."

"It's not a problem," I said, but _way _quieter than usual. Probably no one heard me.

"Embry," the man said, putting a very heavy hand on my shoulder, "has imprinted on a vampire." Though I'm sure the news had gotten all the way around the village by now—_I _knew how gossip worked, Newton should have written a _law_ about it—there were still rustling whispers as he said it. Scandal! A _vampire! No. _"As I'm sure you all understand, this is a little bit of a problem. We're looking for any solutions you might have thought of." More whispers from the peanut gallery, and Speaker Guy continued with, "Personally, I'm in favor of immediate execution. Let me know what you guys think."

And there went my knees. I barely kept myself upright, I hadn't been _expecting _that, this whole trip had just been a series of blindsides, the blindsides were probably having to get in _line, _it was getting so bad. I quickly started contemplating whether I should make a run for it.

Beside me, Speaker Guy was laughing, and patting me with that same heavy hand, almost knocking me over in the state I was in. "Just kidding," he chuckled.

I almost hit him.


	17. Chapter 17

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Merry Christmas!!

---

"No, but seriously," Speaker Guy said after he got over his own extreme hilarity. "Are there any thoughts on how to deal with Embry's imprint?"

"Why do we have to deal with it?" This was from Kira, who was very loud despite being so small. Somehow I wasn't surprised. Also she seemed to be a hopeless romantic, which was good news for me. "It's none of our business. He's in _love._"

"You know, I'm inclined to agree with her," Kenai cut in quickly, as the circle took a collective breath to argue. "It's not really our place to come between an imprinting. Whatever has happened, I'm sure it's happened for a reason."

"If you start saying 'love conquers all', I am out of here," Damon said loudly, standing from his chair. Obviously he planned to do a lot of talking. "It's not like he fell for a Capulet, Kenai, this is a _monster _we're talking about here. Not only is it our responsibility to save him from himself, we have to accept that he's a danger to all the rest of us. You all know what it's like to imprint! You'd do _anything _for your mate, you know you would! How about tell her patrol routes? How about tell her where the Alpha sleeps at night?"

Kenai was already up to defend me, a growl rumbling out of his throat, but I beat him to it. "Hang on!" I protested. "I'm in _love, _I'm not _stupid._"

"Some would argue that they're one and the same," Speaker Guy intoned gravely. Hated that guy.

"I'm not a traitor," I tried instead.

"A traitor to _what?_" Damon pointed out. "He's not even part of the pack."

"He's my _son,_" Kenai growled.

"So is Luke," Damon argued, and across the circle, Luke's head came up, eyes suddenly intent. "What does that mean for heredity, Kenai? Who's going to be the next Alpha _now?_"

I had known, technically, that the Alpha post was supposed to pass from father to son, but I guess I'd never given it much thought. Things didn't run like that in La Push, but only because Jacob had deferred Alpha to Sam. I hadn't thought about it—did that mean…? I _was _Kenai's oldest son.

"That's not the issue at hand," Speaker said firmly, anchoring us back on track. "I think we can all agree that Embry's imprint is indeed, all of our problem." I thought about disagreeing with this, but there was such a surge in muttering that I didn't dare. Mob mentality, you know—and it was mostly the 'mob' half that I was concerned about. "Now what do we intend to do about it?"

"Only one real way to solve it," was Damon's immediate, helpful opinion. "I've said it before—we need to kill the vampire girl."

I heard the tearing snarl and at first I thought it was Kenai, it _sounded _like him—but no, confusingly enough, it seemed to be me. I'd never snarled at anyone in my _life._ I guess it was a spontaneous sort of snarl, triggered by the thought of anyone hurting Tanya—I'd learned in the last few days that I could have some pretty strong reactions to that.

Speaker sort of raised his eyebrows at me, but then moved on. Snarling was probably common enough in Paskiak, nothing to get worked up about. "That's certainly something we could take under consideration," he said carefully, and suddenly I knew exactly why he was running this meeting, not Kenai. Because Kenai was quiet like I was, and remarkably level-headed, but he was also like me in that he was protective of the things he loved. I looked at him and I could tell that if he could just issue an Alpha command and strongarm the decision through, he absolutely would. I _wished _he would—he was about the only person on my side. "Any other ideas?"

"Well," McKenna said, and the instant she opened her mouth I knew she meant to cause trouble. "The way I see it, we don't have to go _that _far. Can't we just forbid him from seeing her?"

"Oh, sure, how are we going to enforce that?" Damon complained. "He's not even in the pack, Kenai can't tell him what to do."

"Well, he wants to be here with Kenai," Shila said reasonably, and I could sense the beginning of people talking about me like I wasn't there. My favorite. "This is the first time he's ever met his father. I think as long as we make sure he understands that he can only stay in Paskiak as long as he keeps away from Tanya, it shouldn't be a problem."

"If he promises he's going to stay away from her, I think we should at least try to trust him on that," McKenna agreed.

"Wait a second!" I yelled. "I have _not _promised to stay away from her, there is no _way _I am going to do that! Don't I get a say in this?"

"Yes," said Speaker. "But so does everyone else." Hooray democracy. "Shall we put it to a vote?"

"No!" Kenai argued, and I felt a sudden rush of affection for him. "I think this should be _my _decision, it's _my _pack—"

"This isn't a pack decision," Speaker reminded him what everyone seemed to be taking as fact now. "This is about everyone. We'll vote."

"All in favor of killing Tanya, raise your hand," Damon said immediately, turning to glare around the circle as if he could intimidate them into a vote. I'm sure it had worked before.

Apparently not everyone in town got the crazy gene, though, because less than a half a dozen hands went up. No surprises there—Luke, Damon, and a couple other men who had been lasering their eyes at me all night. Not, thank goodness, a majority. I hadn't been crazy about the idea of fighting the whole pack.

"All in favor of leaving Embry and Tanya alone, raise your hand," Speaker took over. Hands: Kenai, Kira, me—it wasn't enough. "All in favor of forbidding Embry from seeing Tanya, as long as he lives within the boundaries of Paskiak—raise your hand."

Hands went up all over the circle, a clear majority. Ack.

"Well, that's it then," Speaker said. I really needed to learn his name. So that I could yell at him. "We're in agreement. Embry, you're forbidden from seeing Tanya." He said it in a proud, satisfied tone, as if he'd really accomplished something here tonight. Again, hitting him seemed like an attractive option. But actually there were people I was way more angry at, and hitting _them _took priority. I spun around and headed for Damon.

"This is all your fault," I said, stalking toward him. "This is _all _your fault, this _wasn't _a problem and _you've _been stirring people up, you're a—_malcontent._" Vocab word, tenth grade English.

Damon hadn't moved, seemingly unintimidated by my approach, which was frustrating, but it wasn't going to stop me. Just as I got within swinging distance, though, someone grabbed me by the collar and jerked me back. I looked over my shoulder and saw Kenai, stone-faced and towing me back to my seat. "Pick your fights, kid," he said. "We'll talk about this later."

"But he—"

"We'll _talk,_" he said, and pushed me down into my chair.

I sat there in surprise for a little while. There were a lot of people who could push me around emotionally, people who could push me around mentally and socially. But there weren't a lot of people who could literally, physically push me around. It was a strange feeling—but it was actually a really good thing he had grabbed me, so I wasn't complaining.

"Thanks," I said, once I'd accumulated enough perspective to admit this. The Council had moved on to plumbing and garden boundaries, no one was paying attention to us anymore. Even McKenna was smart enough not to mess with me right now, not after what she'd just done.

"No problem," Kenai said.

We lapsed into silence, and I used my end of it to start figuring out how I was going to keep seeing Tanya. Of course, she didn't exactly want to see _me, _but I figured that was the least of my worries these days. My life was the kind of highway that had potholes and road rage, and my love was the kind of battlefield that had nerve gas.

When someone slunk up behind me, I think it was reasonable for me to assume that they were trying to kill me. It had been that kind of day. I saw that it was Caleb, and the possibility became less likely.

"Shhhh!" he headed off my yell of surprise, hovering between me and Kenai with the sort of low stance that said he was trying to hide from everyone else. "Quiet, Embry. I want to talk to you and no one else."

"Oh," I said quietly. "Okay." I didn't know how the you-and-no-one-else plan was going to work out, because Kenai was already turning with a question mark on his face. At least McKenna hadn't noticed. "Why?"

"She's out there," he told me. "She's asking for you. She won't leave me alone. I was just trying to patrol and she comes out of nowhere, she keeps saying she wants to see you."

"Who? Tanya?" A little more difficult to keep my voice down.

"You think I know their names?" He sounded worried that he was even doing this at all, guilty, unsure. Why _was _he doing this? He hadn't been around for the Council's decision, but still he had to know that fraternizing with the enemy was a no. "It's—your girl. I don't know her name. The blonde one. She showed up and said she wants to see you, she said you would come if she asked."

"_Yeah _I will," I said, practically tumbling off the chair. And then stopping. Because I couldn't exactly get up and walk off, they would _notice. _It was now officially against the rules.

"Go," Kenai whispered, keeping his eyes straight in front of him. "I'll cover for you."

"Thanks," I whispered gratefully.

"Embry!" he said suddenly, his voice kicking up even louder than normal. "Honestly! I know you're upset, but you're just going to have to get used to it. Why don't you go back to the house until you can calm down?"

I smiled at the familiarity—my mom used to say that to me all the time. I wondered if this was where she'd gotten it. "Thanks," I repeated, sliding off my chair.

"Get out of here, kid," he said with a small smile back.

I got out of there.

Questions: was it really Tanya? Caleb had already admitted he couldn't tell them apart, and if it was anything but Tanya, I was dead. And if it _was _Tanya—why? What was with the sudden change of heart? Come to think of it, if it was Tanya I was also probably dead.

Oh well. Didn't matter. I was going anyway.

I wasn't suicidal. I was just really, really in love.


	18. Chapter 18

I had a strange relationship with beauty. I mean, I suppose I recognized and appreciated it just like anyone, but I was just, you know…a werewolf. I saw incredible beauty every day in the faces of my enemies. Beauty equaled vampires equaled bad. By now, it was almost a Pavlov reaction—you see beauty, you run.

Of course, that was before Tanya. I came into the clearing and saw her standing there on the half-snowed outcropping with her hair spilling onto her shoulder the same color as the moonlight, standing with her hands in fists and her head tipped back to the sky. And the sky was green behind her.

She saw me and moved out of her posing-for-great-art position, coming almost carefully toward me if I was a fawn she might spook. And you know, she wasn't far off there. I felt entirely spookable.

"Right," Caleb said. "This is where I get off. Try not to get yourself killed, man."

"Thank you," I said, and did I ever mean it. People had been surprising me tonight—there had been a line drawn, and they weren't all on the sides of it that I'd thought.

"Don't mention it," he said, and slipped away back into the woods. Leaving me alone with her—which was maybe not something I necessarily wanted anymore.

I'd been scared of her for a long time, and then there had been that short wonderful period when I wasn't—and now I was back to being scared of her again. Possibly I was even more scared of her than I had been before. My ribs were just barely healed, and I wasn't crazy about the idea of breaking any more.

"Hi," I said from a safe distance.

"I'm glad you're okay," she said, and she really did look relieved—the lines of her face relaxing as she looked down at me and saw me reasonably unbroken.

"Very sweet of you," I mumbled. I couldn't hardly get myself to look her in the eyes.

"It's just that when I left you, I was worried," she said in a rush—as if it desperately needed explaining. "You weren't healing as fast as you should have—"

"Yeah, I'm sure I wasn't healing very fast when you left me to _die._" Oh. Yikes. I didn't mean that. I guess I was still shaken from the sight of her turning her back to me and leaving.

"I left you where someone could find you," she said defensively. "It wasn't like I could go into the village—I was taking a risk coming as close as I did."

"Wait—what?"

"I said I was taking a risk—"

"I heard what you said," I stopped her. "What do you mean about the village? You were gone in like thirty seconds, we were nowhere _near _the village."

"I came back," she said blankly, hesitating. "Didn't they—what did they tell you?"

No they didn't tell me, but honestly I wouldn't have guessed. Instantly I felt horrible for mistrusting her, for thinking the worst. Of course she wouldn't let me die. Even if she didn't love me she wouldn't leave me like that, she was a good person—vampire—whatever. "They said it was Caleb and McKenna," I explained. Boy, did McKenna have some explaining to do when I got back to Paskiak. "They didn't tell me you—did you really come back for me?"

"Well, I couldn't just let you get stomped to death, could I?" she snapped, suddenly uncomfortable. "Of course I came back."

"_Why?_" I hadn't meant it to come out like that—it was too much. I had said it with all my desperation and heartsickness, I would scare her off.

Now it was her avoiding _my _eyes. She still hadn't come down from her rock.

Funny that we were so careful with each other, thin ice after thin ice, circling each other like boxers and treating each other like glass. Neither of us at all sure of this or how it should be handled. At least she'd stopped trying to kill me—it was a strange relationship when that was what counted as a positive, but I'd pretty much accepted that already.

"I seem to be…" She was searching for words, trying to fish them out of the air like she was netting butterflies. "…drawn to you," she chose finally. "I don't know why. I feel—concern for you. And other things."

"Other things?" I said hopefully.

"Please do not ask me to describe them," she said flatly.

"That's fine." _Anything _was awesome at this point. Something to put in the 'pro' column besides 'she's stopped trying to kill me.' "Do you want me to explain what you're feeling?" Maybe the imprint was starting to work at last? It had never happened like this that _I'd _known, but at least I had a better idea than she did of how this would play out.

"Oh please," she said acidly. "I've been in love before."

"You love me?" Oooh. Maybe a little eager on that one.

She reacted accordingly, recoiling and snapping, "No!" Way to go, Embry. Way to jump the gun. "I didn't say I love you. Did I say I love you?"

Not technically, no. But she'd said enough to keep me smiling for the next few days. I would take it. "You didn't say that," I agreed easily. "Basically, what you're feeling is an imprint—"

"I know what an imprint is," she cut me off. "That has nothing to do with me."

"I imprinted on you," I pointed out. "So…"

"But that doesn't—it can't make me—"

I just nodded solemnly and let her figure it out for herself. Her mouth fell open, then snapped back shut. "I want to change the subject."

"Okay," I said obligingly, climbing up the side of the rock face. If she didn't want to come down, that was fine. I would come up to her. I stood next to her in the snow, careful not to touch her, trying to think of a different subject. "Do you want to tell me why the sky is green?"

"Aurora Borealis," she said. "The Northern Lights. We get that up here."

"It's beautiful."

"I guess."

"You _guess _it's beautiful?" I turned to stare at her.

"No, it is. It is beautiful," she amended, sounding a little guilty. "I'm just used to it. I've been up here a long time."

"How long?"

She didn't answer for a long time—then, finally, "Fifty-four years."

"Wow." It was all I could think to say. Talk about out of my league.

"How old are you, Embry?"

"I'm not telling you."

"You're not _telling _me?" She sounded amused, which made me kind of angry. It was bad enough to be a seventeen-year-old in love with a goddess. I didn't need the goddess making fun of me, too.

"Absolutely not."

"Let's see if I can guess," she said. "Hmm…did you ever have a crush on any of the Spice Girls?"

"Yes," I admitted. "Ginger Spice."

"Aha," she said. "Okay. What about New Kids On The Block?"

"Who?"

"Interesting," she smiled, raising her eyebrows like a villain with an evil plan. "Now let me see your hands," she said, taking them and turning them palms-up.

"Why?" Not that I objected to her touching me, not at _all, _this had to be the first time she'd done it voluntarily—at least if I didn't count hitting. I felt that if I pulled away, blue sparks would jump between us like static electricity. It _felt _electric.

"I just want to see how callused they are."

"It's not like I'm an oak tree," I complained as she ran her fingers over the pads of my hands—most of the damage from wood shop and yard work, a couple of calluses from a temporary try at playing the guitar. "You can't just read my rings or whatever—"

"I'm going to guess that you're…seventeen," she said authoritatively.

Damn. Busted.

"Well," I said sadly. "Yeah."

"Seventeen, huh?" she mused. "Good thing neither of us is human, or we'd probably be arrested."

"So tell me," I said, intent on distracting her from my unfortunate age. I thought about telling her I would be eighteen in May, graduating in June, that she didn't need to _worry _about me, but that all sounded a little desperate, didn't it? Instead I asked, "What's the deal with these Northern Lights? How do they happen?" I didn't remember reading about this in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

"Well," she said thoughtfully, laying back in the snow with one arm behind her head, so she could get a good view of the liquid green lights splashing the sky. She still hadn't let go of my hand, and every minute she held it became the new best minute of my life. "It's got to do with the magnetosphere."

And we laid in the snow and she told me about protons and aurorae and magnetic reconnection, and I learned that she was not only beautiful but _smart, _smart in a way that most beautiful people never bothered to be, smart as anyone I'd ever met. We laid next to each other on the edge of the cliff and watched the green leave the sky and then the blackness, the stars disappearing just before my eyes closed and turned everything black again, and I finally fell asleep.


	19. Chapter 19

When I woke up, Tanya was gone. This was cause for immediate panic, even though it was ridiculous to assume that she would have stayed. Vampires don't sleep, after all—what did I expect, that she would sit next to me for eight hours and watch me sleep? Yeah. Maybe she liked to watch paint dry, too.

It was just that I really felt I was starting to get through to her—she was still so sad and so screwed up, walking around with wounds like she'd just escaped from Intensive Care. But I'd really gotten through to her last night, I knew I had, and to wake up and find her gone was…depressing. I wanted her to be the first thing I saw when I woke up in the morning.

It looked like maybe nine or ten o'clock, but I couldn't tell with the sky overcast like this. What a perfect state for vampires.

As soon as I sat up, though, I was surprised to find her scent hitting my nose _hard, _thick and recent, the burnt-sugar smell of her fresh on the outcropping and leading away down into the woods. It was strange, but a scent like that, she couldn't have gone far. She was still here, somewhere, close.

So I slid down the side of the shallow cliff and followed her into the forest. My jeans and sweatshirt were soaked and refreezing, wet all down my back from where I'd been lying in the snow. I didn't mind—it wasn't like I could get cold—and frankly, when you're a werewolf, you learn to be grateful for having clothes at all. Fortunately I'd managed to stay human since yesterday. I wondered how long I could keep it up—I hadn't reported in to Sam in a fully day and a half. In my defense, I had been busy, but I knew I could look forward to a lecture when I finally tuned in. If I waited very much longer, chances were I'd have the whole pack on my hands, thundering into Paskiak to save me like the Charge of the Light Brigade. That would be awkward.

I could afford to think about that later, though, especially when I came through a thick stand of trees and found Tanya kneeling on the ground, hands lost up to the wrists in snow.

She hadn't left me. She hadn't left. I just stood there on the edge of the woods for a few minutes, trying to understand my sudden good luck. She was so perfect. She was incredible, she was _way _too good for me. What was she doing here? Maybe this was hypocritical of me, after the way I'd been chasing her for the last few days, but now that she was right in front of me it was suddenly very difficult to convince myself that I deserved her.

The thing is, I was average. I was totally and completely mediocre, never a standout or flash of brilliance in my entire life. I was a _small _person—I was a footnote. I was not big, I was _small, _I was _nothing. _I was a speck of dust screaming for existence, nothing and nobody. In the chess game of life, I was a pawn. Tanya was a queen. And queens just didn't fall in love with pawns.

But before I could convince myself to turn right around and run all the way back to Washington, Tanya stood and saw me, and gave me a smile like summer noon sun.

All thoughts of leaving evaporated instantly. God, she was beautiful. "Morning, Embry," she said. "I tried to wake you up."

"Oh," I said sheepishly. "Yeah. I don't—wake up all that well."

"I noticed," she said dryly. "Come here. I want to show you something."

I was already halfway to her when I realized what I was walking on—that I was suddenly feeling ice under my feet. "Whoa!" I yelled, backpedaling frantically. "Hey! Lake!"

"It's _fine,_" she laughed. "Don't worry. It's frozen."

"All the way through?" I said, dubiously, eyeing the lake as if it meant to jump up and eat me. "How is that possible?"

"Embry, do you _know _how cold it is out here?"

I looked down at myself in my thin sweatshirt and jeans. On an average day, I ran a temperature of about a hundred and three. "No," I said. "No, I don't."

"It's about twenty-five below zero," she informed me, stomping the ice with her foot. "Believe me, this thing is not going to break."

"Maybe not for _you,_" I argued. "You're what, a hundred and twenty pounds?"

"Come on, Embry. Trust me."

Trust her. I'd been taught to never trust a vampire, it had been made _very _clear that trusting a vampire was something that I should never do. I guess I just didn't think of her as a vampire, though, because I stepped right onto that lake. After all, if she _wanted _to kill me, there were certainly easier ways than Death By Frozen Lake.

It held.

By the time I made it over to her, though, I still had no idea what she was doing. She had knelt back down again, and I saw that there seemed to be some kind of—hole in the ice, next to her.

"Tanya, dear," I said politely. "What are you doing?"

"Ice fishing," she told me, and stuck her hand in.

"I thought you said the lake was frozen all the way through," I said nervously as the water sloshed against the broken ice edge.

"I said it was frozen _enough," _she corrected. "If you're really that worried, you can just go start eating breakfast. I'll be there in a minute."

"Breakfast?" I asked blankly.

She pointed across the lake, and I looked and saw smoke rising from the shore. "I built a fire over there," she said. "There's some salmon cooking for you, it should be done by now."

"Oh," I said. She—surprised me a lot. There weren't a lot of people in the world who surprised me. She surprised me pretty much every five minutes. The salmon for breakfast? Yeah, I had not seen that coming. "Thank you. Do you need any help?"

"No," she said. "These ones are for me. I'll only be a minute."

I didn't want to think too hard about the fish "for her". They were still flopping as she pulled them out of the water, cutting patterns in the snow as they thrashed with their fins and tails. _This is a part of her, _I told myself firmly. _You know it could be worse. _And I went to eat my salmon.

---

"So," I said, as I ate the last bite of salmon, careful not to talk with my mouth open. I have to say—fresh samon grilled over an open fire? Pretty unbelievably good. She'd promised to teach me how to gut a fish in fifteen seconds flat. "You're fifty-four years old?"

As little as I wanted to bring up the subject again—I wanted to know everything about her. I wanted to know about every minute of every day of the fifty-four years.

"No," she said, biting into a fish. That had been weird at first, but way better than the deer. I guess it had never occurred to me that fish even had blood, but she said they were good snack food. Like popsicles. I mostly just tried not to watch. "I'm eighty-three."

A pause. "Oh." Silly of me. I guess I'd just assumed that she'd sprung into existence fully formed, Alaska Tanya. Silly. "So you came up here in—"

"Nineteen forty-eight."

"Okay." I felt like I should be taking notes. "And before nineteen forty-eight—"

"I was in Chicago."

"Chicago," I said. "Nice. Good pizza in Chicago." My mom liked it there, we'd road-tripped up that way at least three times.

"It wasn't exactly known for it's pizza yet," she said wryly.

"Oh yeah," I grinned. "Nineteen forty-eight. So what were you doing there, if you weren't eating pizza?"

"Well," she said, and her tone said _long story. _It said _painful subject, _and that was the last thing I wanted. My curiosity took a faraway second to her happiness.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want," I said quickly. "I was just wondering."

"No, it's okay," she said, her chin coming up very slightly. Toughest girl I ever saw, I swear she could take out a semi truck with just one finger and a glare. "It was a long time ago. It's not a big deal. Are you comfortable? It's a long story."

I kicked my legs out and leaned on my hands. The longer the better—she had a gorgeous voice, sort of a low husky alto. I could have listened to her read the Dictionary—but hearing her tell about her life? Even better. "Ready."

"Okay," she said, looking like a sprinter getting ready for a race. "Well. I didn't start out in Chicago. I was born in Nalchik, Russia."

Russia. That actually explained a lot. Mostly things like her hair and her cheekbones and her height and her smile.

"Here's the most embarrassing part," she said with a small, tight smile. "I was a mail-order bride. Yes, really, I was—in my defense, I didn't really know what I was doing, I just wanted to get out of my little town and go to America. It _worked, _after all—I got there. I got myself married myself off to this horrible, horrible man named Alan Stratton who was thirty years older than me and a raging alcoholic. I was not happy."

After about a year and a half, I met Charlie. He was—pretty special, I suppose. He was charming and sympathetic, and most importantly, he was a vampire. I didn't discover this right away, of course, and by the time I figured it out, I was so head over heels that it hardly mattered. I mean, I was trapped. I was unhappy. He was offering immortality, and a way out. I didn't see what would be so wrong about it."

But as soon as I let him change me, I discovered that I was by no means the love of his life. In fact, I was expected to join almost a—harem, or something, there must have been at least twelve or thirteen girls, all pretty docile and all pretty much willing to do what he said. That was I was used to at that time of my life—obedience. So I slipped right into line and let it happen. Charlie liked to be in control of people—he collected women like baseball cards."

That was where I first met Kate, who was just another one of the wives—and then, eventually, Irina. Irina was different. Irina was strong and angry and fierce, and fiercely independent, and not taking to her new life all that well. Most of the problem was, Irina didn't want to hunt. Charlie grew more and more frustrated with her as she refused to grow out of this "phase", but he'd pulled her from death row, double homicide, and she had sworn she'd never kill a person again."

Animals, she used to say. We can eat animals. Charlie had promised her this would be fine before he'd changed her, sure she wouldn't be able to resist once she'd really felt the hunger. He underestimated her—and as beautiful as she was, he was losing interest. I heard him talk about killing her—I couldn't let it happen. She was the strongest thing I'd ever seen, I was fascinated by her. I was fascinated by the way she looked him in the eye and told him no.

I told Kate, and then I told Irina, and she didn't get mad but she got quiet, and stayed quiet for a long time. Planning."

"So what happened to Charlie?" I was almost afraid to ask.

"Charlie?" she said with a faint, distanced pride. "Charlie isn't around anymore."

"Oh," I said, and stared down at the bones of my salmon. In a way, I was sort of proud of her, too—but I couldn't imagine a time when she'd been a pushover. It was just a difficult quality to attach to the woman sitting in front of me right now.

"You done with your salmon?" she said briskly. "I have plans for today."

I knew I should probably be getting back to Paskiak—my dad could only cover for so long. The prospect of spending the day with Tanya, though, was way too much temptation to resist. "Okay," I said, tossing the bones over my shoulder. "What are we doing?"

"I wanted to take you back to the coven," she said. "I want you to meet my sisters."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I said, suddenly so much less tempted. "Are you serious? I think I already met them—back from when they tried to kill me? Remember?"

"Irina was just having a bad day," she said firmly, taking hold of my wrist. "They're not all like that, it'll be fine."

"I really doubt that," I said, but I let myself get dragged forward. Wasn't a lot I could do, really, in my human form she was stronger than me. "This is a really bad idea, Tanya. _Really._"

"Come on," she said. "It'll be fine. Trust me."

And of course I trusted her. I did. I trusted her.

Which was probably going to get me in trouble sooner or later.


	20. Chapter 20

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 200 reviews!!! Thank you guys so much! I love the feedback, and I love love love you, _____ (insert name here)!

---

I'm not really all that good with girls. After how I've handled this whole Tanya thing, I'm sure it goes without saying, but there it is. I'm not. I'm not like Jacob with his charm and sunniness, I'm not like Quil with his pick-up lines. Dealing with girls, for me, is usually just a series of blunders and blind luck, and it usually didn't turn out all that well. I guess I'm lucky that I had a little help from the imprinting this time, because that was just the way it was. Embry Call, Most Likely To Fall Flat On His Face In Front Of The Girl He Has A Crush on. Class of 2009.

It was bad enough when I was dealing with girls who actually liked me back—but terrifying vampire girls who hated me and wanted to tear me into a thousand pieces? This was not going to go well.

I was still digging my heels a little bit as Tanya led me over the glacier to her coven. I know she thought it was a good idea, and I understood where she was coming from—if there was, fingers crossed, any possibility of her loving me, it stood to reason that she would want me to meet her family sooner or later. I mean, I couldn't wait for her to meet my mom. I wanted my mom to meet her and see how beautiful she was, how wonderful and clever and sweet. I wanted us to play card games together, I wanted my mom to teach her how to make lemon meringue pie. It's just that when you find that person for you, you wanted the people you love to see her too, and nod their heads and say yes, Embry. This is right for you.

The thing was, though, my family wasn't vampires. My family didn't hate her, except for maybe Kenai, and therefore I wasn't _introducing _her to Kenai, I didn't want to screw things up. I just had the overwhelming feeling that this was not a good idea, I felt it right down to my bones—especially the ones that had recently been broken.

"Tanya," I tried one more time, stopping her as we went over the crest of the glacier, the peak where it swelled like a wave. "I really don't think this is a good idea."

"I know you're worried, Embry," she said, squeezing my hand reassuringly. "But I can't do this without them. If I'm going to be—with you," she said with difficultly. We still hadn't entirely figured that out—what we were. Where we intended to go with this. All we knew was that we were two poles of a magnet and that it was going to be difficult for us to stay apart. "Then they are just going to have to get used to the idea. They're my sisters—if I explain how it is, they'll understand. They love me."

"But if they try to kill me—" I said, just to check the backup plan. I was sure we would need it.

"We'll get out of there at once," she agreed. "I'm not going to put you in danger, Embry."

Apparently we had wildly different definitions of what danger was. But hey—if this had to happen sometime, it might as well be now. I had to believe her that she would keep me safe.

So we went. I didn't see the house until we were right up on it, hidden pretty cleverly behind a screen of trees. I was sure that no one could get over the glacier by themselves, not if they were human, and it seemed unlikely that even satellites could pick out the small, hidden house behind the trees. It seemed ridiculous that they should be living here, exactly where they wanted, thumbing their nose at civilization while civilization went right on by without a clue. Carlisle's family took pains to blend and assimilate with human culture, but apparently Tanya and her sisters had decided they would rather just disappear.

"It's a beautiful house," I told her as we ran down to it, sliding skidmarks into the snow as we ran the steep angle. It was beautiful—smallish but well-constructed, clean-lined, classy. I wondered who they'd gotten to build it. I wondered if he was still alive.

That wasn't fair. I kept having to remind myself that these weren't normal vampires, that these women were fighting every day not to be monsters, that they weren't _bad _people. I'm sure I would have an easier time believing it if they stopped trying to kill me.

"Yeah, we like it," Tanya said casually. "This is Kate's baby, she spend _years _designing it. There were just a lot of specifics, you know? Definitely a unique situation."

"I bet. How did you get the plumbing laid and all that?"

"Embry, you live for a hundred years," she said, "and there isn't _anything _you don't know how to do. But don't tell your wolf friends, because we're pretty much stealing it from them."

"My lips are sealed."

We got up to the door, and I felt like we should knock, but it was her house and we didn't, just opened the door and walked right in. I tried to convince myself to relax and was only very marginally successful.

Here's the way things happened, exactly in this order: first, there was silence, and I heard the door shut behind me with a sort of haunted-house finality. Then, all Hell broke loose.

I'm being perfectly serious, that was exactly what it seemed like to me. Except less hot than one might expect for Hell, vampires suddenly appearing on every side and snatching at me with icy hands. There was a lot of yelling—me yelling in surprise and terror, Tanya yelling at her sisters to get away from me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and pushing me to the floor, with her crouched over me like a granite invincible protective shield.

There were three of them—two female one male, strange, I'd thought they were all girls, but as I watched them through Tanya's arms I saw someone grabbing their shoulders, pulling them back, prying them away from the outside while Tanya pushed from the inside.

"All right," I heard Rosalie's sarcastic soprano. "Break it up. Get back, guys, let Tanya explain."

They reluctantly backed away, one by one, and as Tanya let me carefully up I saw each of them individually for the first time, not as a bloodthirsty terrifying Mob of Death. Kate, I recognized immediately, and Irina wasn't there that I could see, which was _good. _There were two others I'd never seen, tall gorgeous Latinos with glossy black hair and matching complexions, and they seemed to have calmed down faster than Kate, who was still quivering with unspent malice in the corner.

The male was the first to speak, demanding, "Tanya, what's the meaning of this?"

"You brought a _werewolf _to our _house?_" chimed in the other one—still the slightest hint of accent in their English, I'd guess Spanish if I had too. Too smooth for Mexican.

"Carmen, Eleazar," Tanya said evenly, seeming determined to treat this as a normal introduction. I could feel her shaking, too, as she leaned against me—maybe now she understood what I meant when I said _very bad idea. _"This is Embry. Embry, this is Carmen and Eleazar. Kate and Rosalie, I believe you've already met."

Yeah, well, it really depended on your definition of 'met'. "Nice to meet you," I said stiltedly, trying to control my voice. The worst was over, I was telling myself. They wouldn't try to kill me again—right?

The vampires were still silent, probably waiting for the good explanation they were sure was forthcoming. The collective _and you brought him here why…? _hung in the room like cigarette smoke, choking conversation. "I wanted you all to meet him," she said uselessly. "I know this is weird and seems dangerous to you, but I want you to get used to the idea of him. Embry's going to be around a lot from now on."

"Why?" Kate asked in her winter voice, slicing into me like windchill from twenty feet away.

"Because we're, um—" I listened just as interestedly as anyone else in the room. We're what, Tanya? Tell me what we are, whatever you say I'll accept it. I'm just curious. "Together," she decided on finally. "We're together." Good enough for me.

"Tanya, dear," Carmen asked flatly. "Are you crazy?"

"No," she said defensively. "It's this mystical werewolf thing, he imprinted on me, and it goes two ways. I am _not _resentful about this, in fact I'm very happy, and I don't want to hear another word about it. This is just the way it is. I brought him here to meet you guys, but clearly you are not ready for that, so this is all I'll say—I don't want anyone to hurt him. I hope you understand me when I say that, I don't want him _touched,_ and anyone who goes after him is going to have to deal with me. Embry is going to be around for a long time, and you _are _going to stop trying to kill him. It's up to you when that happens, but I _really _hope it's soon. That's all," she finished lamely. "We're going now. Goodbye."

She was pushing me gently toward the door with her shoulder, and I didn't need to be told twice—I was out of there so quickly they haven't invented a measurement of time small enough for it. I was _gone. _

Tanya caught me halfway up the glacier. "Hey, Embry," she said, zigzagging in front of me so that I skidded to a sudden stop, feet scrabbling on the ice. "I'm so sorry. Seriously, I didn't think it would be that bad."

"So you admit that I was right?"

"I didn't say _that—"_

"Just say it, Tanya," I said solicitously. "Admit it. Say that I was right."

"Fine," she sighed. "You were right. But don't get used to it."

"Yes, dear," I grinned—feeling _much _better now that I was out of that house. "Listen, I have to get back—I'm not technically supposed to be seeing you at all, the pack will be wondering where I am."

"Just call us Romeo and Juliet," she said wryly. "Try to get out when you can, okay? But don't come to the house. We should probably—give them some time."

"I'll see if I can sneak out tonight," I said. "Meet me at the frozen lake?"

"Perfect," she said, practically melting the glacier with a quick smile. Her smiles were incredible, they really were, take a picture and sell them as an alternative energy source. I used to worry that she didn't smile enough, but really that only made it more special when she did. Supply and demand, you know? "See you tonight."

I went wolf once she was out of sight, hadn't done it for awhile, and for a few seconds it was very refreshing. The sudden length of my limbs, the sharpness of my senses—but then, right along with it, the white noise. A dozen voices all yelling at me at top volume, all at the same time.

_I know, I know, _I sighed to my pack. _I'm in trouble, I'm grounded. I'm dangerously irresponsible. _

Same old, same old.


	21. Chapter 21

Honestly, I didn't really know a lot _about _Romeo and Juliet. I remember being forced to read the play in the tenth grade, and usually I have pretty good recall, but seeing as I was going through a mild rebellious phase at the time, I don't seem to have picked a lot of it up. It was one of those phases where I was sure that adults were stupid, especially authority figures, and school was stupid and things that were assigned in school were not to be taken seriously. _Romeo and Juliet_, I'm afraid, was a casualty of the phase.

I remember _some _things, mostly those vague pop-culture-consciousness things that everyone picks up sooner or later—I remembered that things didn't exactly go well for them, I remembered that somehow or other they ended up dead. And then something about star-crossed lovers. Everything else, though, was a mystery. So Tanya comparing us to Romeo and Juliet was not nearly as helpful as one might imagine, because I wasn't actually so sure what that meant.

I had decided to go home and look it up, but who knows if I'd have the time. For instance, I seemed to be getting rather a lot of instructions from Sam, most of which had to do with staying away from Tanya. _I can't do that, _I explained patiently for what I guessed was maybe the fortieth time. _I'm imprinted. You of all people should understand that, Sam. _

_Can we not talk about that? _Leah insisted. _Jeez. _

_Are you at least being _careful? Sam wanted to know. _I don't want you to be alone with her, I don't want you to meet her places where you're out of earshot—_

_Sam, believe me, I can trust her. She's in love with me, too._

_Oh, did she tell you that? _Paul asked sarcastically, as if this was an old ploy that was used by vampires all the time.

_No, actually she didn't, _I said, half embarrassed, half defensive. _But I can tell. _

_This is not good, _Sam griped. _This is not going to end well. _

_Why does nobody understand me when I say I'm in _love? I wondered, meant to wonder it to myself, but nothing was really ever to myself when I was a wolf, was it? _Everybody thinks it's going to be a problem. The only people who _don't _think it's a problem are me and Tanya, and I think that should _tell _you something. _

_Embry, we know how you feel, _Quil said, and suddenly I remembered that I _missed _Quil, I missed Quil and Jacob and their elbows in my ribs and their stupid jokes, and I missed the coffeeshop and I missed my mom—well, better not go down that road. _We're just worried. We don't want you to get hurt. _

_Nothing ventured, nothing gained? _I tried. _No man is an island? Love is a battlefield?_

_Do not quote Pat Benetar at me, _Sam snapped. _This is serious. _

_I assume she was serious when she wrote it, _I stalled. I was almost to Paskiak, I was going to have to go back human any minute now. I was still a mile or so out, I guess, but it would almost be worth it to switch early. _Well, I'm back to the village, I'd better go! See you guys soon!_

There was an instant clamor of everyone trying to get in last-minute yelling at me, but Sam talked right over the top of them. _You _are _coming back, aren't you? _He said disapprovingly. _You graduate in a month and a half, you _do _know that. _

_I'm already accepted to everything I applied to, grades don't matter anymore, _I brushed off. _It's not like it's going to take me a month and a half for…whatever. _Whatever indeed. What, exactly, _was _my end goal here? I didn't want to be here in Alaska forever, I lived in _Washington, _I had basically just wanted to meet my dad and I had done that, and now I was staying for Tanya. Tanya was not going to want to leave. Tanya had lived here for fifty-four years.

But that was probably something we should discuss after we had actually known each other for more than three days.

_Anyway, _I said briskly. _I'm going. Tell my mom I love her and I miss her, and I'll be back as soon as I can. _

_Prom is in a week, _Jacob reminded me, as if that might have some sort of effect.

_Prom, _I said blankly. _Why do I care about prom again? _

_Just thought you might want to come. We did need you for the limo, you know. We've been planning this _forever.

_Um, yeah, I don't know if that's going to happen. _I had a sudden, bizarre vision of Tanya in a bright prom dress, cheap corsage on her wrist. Yeah, probably not. _But I'll see you guys soon. I promise. Bye! _

And then I got out of there, before they could say anything else. That was the trick, with my pack. You just had to cut them off.

Right as I was getting my jeans on, though, I saw them. We were almost half a mile out from Paskiak, there was no reason for them to be there, but there they were, and I knew who they were. One of them tall and made of shoulders, one smaller and sort of twisty, ropy and wiry like a bonsai tree. Damon and Luke.

I did the first thing I could think of and jumped backwards into a soapberry bush. Very smart and very stupid, all at the same time—smart because soapberries had a strong smell, they would cover up my scent perfectly so that it wouldn't give me away the minute they turned in my direction. Stupid because soapberry bushes had thorns.

I stifled a yelp of pain as the bush's teeth dug into me, had to stay very still, they were so _close, _and yelping was definitely out of the question. Whatever it was they were doing out here, it seemed fairly secret, and fairly hostile, and I'd always been pretty sure that if I ended up alone with Luke he was going to try to kill me. Being poked with thorns was nothing compared to being dead.

"—just that he's my _dad,_" Luke was complaining, folding his arms together across his chest. "I don't even like _talking _about it. I can't do that to him." What, Psycho Luke had scruples? I was interested. What was bad enough to turn off Psycho Luke?

"He doesn't _love _you," Damon said. Yikes! Who said things like that? "He's barely said two words to you since Embry showed up. I don't think he ever even wanted you, Luke." Oh my gosh! _Seriously! _I could hardly stop myself from jumping right out of the bush and saying, no! Weird! That's ridiculous! What are you saying? As if he didn't _already _need therapy.

Luke didn't say anything back, though, so probably he believed it. _I _didn't believe it—I hadn't even been here a week, but it wasn't hard to see what was up between Luke and Kenai. Luke was a teenager, and clearly off his head, and Kenai loved him but didn't have a blessed clue what to do with him. I saw it in the way Kenai looked at his son, bewildered but affectionate—concerned. I could see how that might be easy to misinterpret.

"Yeah," Luke said. "But…"

"I'm sorry, Luke, there's just no other way to do this," Damon said, his voice falling from angry to smooth sympathetic, sounding like a car salesman or a motivational speaker. Bending things with his voice. "There is no way for this to work unless your dad is _gone. _I know what you're going through, he's my brother just like he's your dad. But you know we have to do, Luke. Next time he's on patrol—"

I leaned forward, thinking _yeah, what? _but it was what screwed me up. I put a hand on one of the branches—careful to avoid the thorns, but apparently not paying attention to the possibility that the branch might snap. Which it did. Of course.

My first instinct was to freeze, but after a half second I realized it would be more practical for me to drop down to my knees and put my hands over my head, curling up like a hedgehog into the smallest I could be which wasn't very small, considering I was 6'3, but hopefully small enough.

"There's someone here," Luke said, and I could hear the tension suddenly humming in his voice. Like a hivefull of bees.

"Nobody's here," Damon said impatiently. "Do you _smell _anyone? It's probably just a bird."

_Mmmhmm, absolutely,_ I thought in their direction_, _focusing on staying perfectly still and _inside _the bush._ It's a bird. It's really just a bird. Go back to your regularly scheduled activities. _"I should go," Luke said, spooked beyond repair. "We should go, I shouldn't be out here." And he was gone, just walking off in that way that teenagers did, I recognized it. The thing was, if you walked quick enough, usually nobody stopped you.

"Hey, Luke!" And Damon didn't stop him—just chased after him in a vaguely desperate way, hovering over his shoulder. For some reason, Luke was important to Damon, and it was important that Luke stay on board with—whatever it was they were talking about. There was some kind of plan here, and I was guessing it was one of the sinister kinds of plans, but I hadn't heard enough. Stupid soapberry bush.

See, now I was just left with a vague sense of conspiracy and doom, with nothing really to pin it to. Fantastic.

I carefully pushed my way out of the bush, adding only a couple of scratches to my collection—most from the bush, but three from Kate where she'd managed to get past Tanya. They would heal soon. It was no big deal. Basically, I just needed to get home, and I needed to do it quickly. Before Damon and Luke managed to blow up the world, or whatever.


	22. Chapter 22

I had read somewhere once that the life expectancy for medieval kings was thirty-one years.

Of course, there were other factors that you had to think about, like hygiene and the Black Plague, and the fact that medieval medicine mostly consisted of knives and leeches. But besides all that, the main problem with being a king seemed to be that everybody tried to kill you all the time.

I wondered how old Kenai was. He had to be older than thirty-one.

This was the reason I'd never wanted a lot of responsibility, never wanted charge of a pack or a kingdom or anything. Jacob had tried to make me run for Student Council Vice President with him once, but eventually he'd had to go with Quil as a running mate, because I was not doing it. I didn't want to put myself in power—such as it was in the Student Council—and get the target sign that came with it. You put yourself up there, and suddenly everyone is looking at you—and not all those looks are going to be nice.

I hadn't gotten a chance to say it at Council yesterday, but I did not, under any circumstances, want to be Alpha. They'd brought it up, after all, about Paskiak heredity and first-born sons and all, but they did not even have to worry about me. I didn't want it. I'd watched Sam, I'd watched Kenai, and it seemed to me that all you got from being Alpha was migraine headaches and your relatives plotting mysteriously against you.

"I don't _know _what they meant," I told Kenai for the tenth time, further emphasizing the 'mysterious' part. "I was hardly there for a minute, I didn't hardly hear anything."

"I'm sure it's nothing," Kenai assured me, but his eyebrows said otherwise. "Damon's always been kind of a—plotter. I'm sure he's just trying to get in with Luke because Luke's the next Alpha. Damon's always wanted to be Alpha but he'll never touch it. Luke is probably the closest he'll get. It's not a big deal, Embry, I'll just check on their thoughts next time I'm running with them, make sure nothing dangerous is going on."

_I _could think of a way Damon could be Alpha—again, had these people never seen "The Lion King"? But considering that he was plotting _with _Luke and not against him, maybe he just didn't have that much imagination. Kenai's explanation made sense. I guess everything sounded way more sinister from the inside of a bush.

"So why does Damon hate you so much?" I asked instead. Just one of a dozen questions that I'd been holding onto.

"Oh, it's just, you know," Kenai said, with the same sort of vagueness that I recognized from when I was a kid and asking my mom if Santa Claus was real. "We're just brothers."

"And brothers hate each other?" I said doubtfully.

"Some brothers do."

I looked at the tightness in his face and decided to go right on ahead to a different subject. "Hey, thanks for covering for me earlier," I said—didn't want to talk about it _too _much, since I really wasn't sure why he was on my side, but was really grateful for it. Just wanted to let him know that I appreciated it—because I was probably going to need the same again sometime. Actually probably really soon.

"Yeah, no problem," he said, seeming willing to treat it with the same casualness. "How's it going with your girl, anyway?"

Wow, he called her a _girl. _Not a leech, not a monster, not a succubus (which was a word I'd just learned—from Leah, ironically enough). He really was making an effort, wasn't he? "Really well," I said, holding back enough enthusiasm that he wouldn't think I'd been succubused. "Really really well. I think she's coming around. I mean, the imprint works both ways, right? I guess it was just a matter of time."

"Oh, it's possible to resist," Kenai said with a humorless smile. Again I was reminded that this man used to be in love with my mother—apparently it wasn't something _he _liked being reminded of, either. "You can hold it off for a really long time if you put your mind to it."

I had a flash of my old fears about imprinting. I mean, I suppose it had worked out and all in my circumstances, but—it really wasn't fair, was it? What if we had other plans. What if she had other plans. Here we were attached at the hip.

But it was easy to push these thoughts out of my head by just thinking of who it was I was attached to. "Listen," I said carefully. "I'm supposed to meet her at the lake tonight."

His eyebrows dropped again. I had a stray thought that I was glad I hadn't inherited those eyebrows. Kenai had them, Luke had them—I had my mom's eyebrows, my mom's nice, controllable eyebrows. Thanks, mom. "Hmmm," he said. "That could be difficult. I mean, you were gone for a _long _time yesterday, Embry. People were noticing—I had to keep making things up, like you were sleeping in or I'd sent you out somewhere."

"Oh," I deflated. Great.

"I guess I could just take you on patrol with me tonight," he continued. "I could say I wanted to show you the ropes or, you know—something. And then I could just drop you off at the lake and come back for you later."

It was such a good solution. It was so nice and good and unexpected that I did something unexpected as well, which was jump up from where I was sitting and hug him.

It was _not _planned. It was _not _premeditated. It was not a premeditated hug. It was just that hugging people was something that I did sometimes, and usually under these kinds of circumstances. It was just an instinct.

It was just that neither of us realized what I was doing until I was doing it—and then both of us realized it at the same time and sort of froze. I was hugging him. I hugged him. This was our first-ever hug, and we hadn't _planned _for it to be this way. It was sort of a Moment.

We were _guys, _though, and we sure as hell didn't know what to do with a Moment, so we just sort of stayed where we were for a few seconds and then pulled away, trying not to look each other in the eyes. "Right," Kenai said, clearing his throat. "Okay then. We'll do that tonight. So, um…are you hungry? Want something to eat?"

---

_Hey Dad? _I asked as we ran. I guess it was strange that I called him Dad, that I thought of him as Kenai but had called him Dad right off the bat, even when I'd just met him. I suppose I'd just always been missing a Dad, and if he was willing to fit where there were missing pieces then I was just going to go with it.

_Yeah? _He didn't even look back at me as he spoke, he was _good _at being a wolf, busy watching for ice and weaving between trees.

_Have you ever read 'Romeo and Juliet'? _Kind of a stupid question to ask your long-lost dad, but I never had gotten the chance to look it up.

_'Romeo and Juliet'? Sure. _He sounded a little puzzled, but he was a chill guy in general and not worrying about it. I found myself wondering again where Luke could possibly have come from. _Why?_

_I was just wondering, _I said. _Do you remember what—happened to them? _

Happened _to them? _Kenai appeared to be thinking. _They died. _

_Yes, I know _that. That was about the only part I _did _know. _How did they die? _

_They actually killed themselves, if I remember right, _Kenai informed me. _It was all pretty stupid, really. _

_Oh. _It was good to know. But not particularly reassuring. I was thinking that maybe me and Tanya should find a better romantic model than Romeo and Juliet.

We climbed up over a frozen snowbank and there was the lake—certainly an easier route than I'd taken the other day. We ran across it with our claws scraping ice, toward the small silver figure standing in the middle, looking something like a lightning rod.

But as we got close, Tanya turned and looked at us, and in the same instant she and Kenai froze. Not the kind of frozen from an unexpected hug, but the kind of frozen that's abrupt and violent, flash-frozen, the shocked stare of two people making a connection they should have made a lot time ago.

The frozenness didn't last long, though, because they didn't seem to want to sit and stare at each other. Mostly what they seemed to want to do was kill each other.

You can imagine that this came as quite a shock to me. Tanya, who'd been protecting me, and Kenai who'd been telling everyone it was okay for me to be in love with a vampire, and they saw each other and tried to tear each others' throats out.

_Hey! _I yelled—I knew Tanya couldn't hear me, but _Kenai _could, and he was the one with his paws on Tanya's chest, tackling her over into the snow. _Hey, what the hell? Stop it!_

But they didn't stop it, nor did they show any signs of stopping it in the near future, so I rammed my shoulder into Kenai and rolled him off Tanya, getting between them as she got up and immediately tried to go after him—blocking them both as they snapped and snarled, suddenly the monsters they'd been accused of being all along.

_Stop it! _I dodged in front of Kenai as he made a break for her, wondering how long I could hold them both off. _What's _wrong _with you? What are you doing? _

_You didn't tell me it was _her, Kenai snarled.

_Her? _I was very confused and coming up fast on frantic. _I didn't know it made a difference! _

_You want to know how I got this scar, Embry? _he snarled. _Why don't you ask her? _


	23. Chapter 23

Here was the only scene I remembered from _Romeo and Juliet_: giant swordfight, and Tybalt dies. I remember because my teacher made us get up and act it out. I was Romeo, and Jacob was Tybalt, and I got to pretend to kill him. I don't have a clear memory of exactly what went on in that scene, but I do remember that, at the end of it, there were an awful lot of people dead on the floor.

Well, at least a lot of people lying on the floor poking each other, trying not to giggle till the scene ended. Tenth grade English—we weren't exactly the Royal Shakespeare Company. Point was, lots of bodies, lots of casualties. It seemed that when two people fell in love, everyone else should probably just stay out of the way. Or they would get killed. It was like a hurricane.

I did not want that to happen here. I didn't want bodies on the floor. I really really did not want Tanya and Kenai to kill each other, and I had to figure out why they wanted to in the first place.

Pretty straightforward goals, I thought. I mean, honestly, it's not like I ask too much. But since nothing in my life ever, _ever _goes smoothly—this was easier said than done.

_I can't ask Tanya about your scar, Dad! _I yelled at him, a little confused at what his _scar _had to do anything in the first place.Was there any chance they'd suffered completely simultaneous psychotic breaks and were just temporarily out of their mind? Because that would be simpler. _Tell me what the hell is going on here!_

Kenai had backed off a little and was pacing on the other side of me, chest heaving as he glared at Tanya with his shooter-marble wolf eyes. _My _scar, _Embry, _he repeated. _The one on my face. _

_Yeah. I've seen it. _In fact, it was the first thing I'd ever noticed about him, sitting in that coffeeshop with his coffee and his staring and his gigantic action-hero scar. _What does it have to do with Tanya?_

I really should have made the connection myself, but he filled me in. _Is that her name? Tanya? _How could he not _know _her? What did he call her, Thing One? _Tanya _gave _me this scar. _

Tanya, behind me, had all but backed off—she was standing with her arms crossed, watching Kenai, so tense you could have used her as a bowstring. I could imagine how difficult it must be for her to keep standing here with no blessed clue of what we were saying, but somehow she was still here.

_Tanya did this, _Kenai told me. _Tanya about tore my face off. Tanya killed your uncle's daughter. You want to know why Damon hates me, Embry? That's why. Because I took Kerry out on patrol one day and I came back without her. Because we ran into _her. _You should have seen it. Blood everywhere. It never did heal right, not with her venom in it. Took five months to heal, and Kerry never came back at all. _

It was another dead deer moment. Me looking down at Tanya with blood on her mouth and her hands. I hadn't known I had a cousin but I felt it that she was dead, and I felt it that Tanya had killed her.

But love was love. If you've been in it or through it then you'll understand what I mean. Love was eyes closed. Love was hands over your ears, hands thrown up saying I don't care. I don't care if she cheated I don't care if she crashed my car—I don't care if she killed my cousin because the pain of whatever thing she did can't possibly compare to the pain of not being with her because of it.

I had watched all those romantic comedies when my mom insisted on them. I had heard all about what love was supposed to be. Love was never having to say you're sorry. Love was never let go, Rose, and I'm flying, Jack, love was a heart broken and still beating, love was _magic. _

Well, that wasn't it for me. For me, love was not letting anyone kill the girl I was in love with. It was what I had spent a vast majority of my time in Alaska doing, and I planned to keep doing it.

_You've both killed people, _I said to Kenai, my mind now made entirely up. Believe it or not, all that thought and inner conflict had happened in a few split seconds. That's the way it happens with inner conflict sometimes. _You and them have been at it for decades, there was bound to be some people who died, and I don't think it's anyone's fault. You would have done the same thing. You probably _have _done the same thing. Not that I'm blaming you either, it's just—the way we were made. _

He was shaking now, too, like Tanya, I was surprised the whole lake hadn't shattered apart with the force of our tension, with the contained pressure of them not killing each other because I was standing between. _You're going to stand with her, Embry? _he demanded. _Even after that? _

_Yes, _I said firmly. _After everything. _Then, because I felt I should say something else: _You know how it is. _

He didn't reply for a long time, just stood there and growled, so I tried again. _Dad? _

No response. More growling. Was he growling at Tanya, or at me? I couldn't tell anymore.

_Dad, _I said. _Are you going to tell—_

_I have to get back to my patrol, _he said abruptly, and he turned and ran away.

Great. That meant absolutely nothing—except that he was really mad. Was he going to tell the Council? Would they kick me out of Paskiak? Had he finally gotten sick of having me around?

I turned to Tanya, and she was watching me with her eyes rolled back like a spooked horse. The effort it must be taking her to stand this close—she put up with me when I was human, even though her senses told her what I was, but it was another thing entirely for me to be standing in front of her as a wolf with five-inch teeth, and teeth designed specifically, genetically, to tear her apart. The one thing that could really kill her.

She took a step towards me. I was so surprised to see it that I almost jumped back, but I caught myself, and stayed perfectly still as she closed the space between us. She stood right in front of me, and reached out and put her hand on my neck.

She was still shaking, and her hand was very cold.

---

"Listen," I said, after I'd changed back and we were sitting on that same cliff, looking right out onto the lake and the moon, looking the same as it had last night with the only difference being which night we sat here. "I'm sorry about that."

"Not your fault," she said. "I mean, you saw what happened when you tried to meet _my _family."

"Yeah." I was trying to block that one out. "I bet you don't even know who that was trying to kill you, do you?'

"Oh, I know," she said wryly. "I recognize the scar. That one tries to kill me every once in awhile, it's in my interest to know what he looks like."

"That's my dad."

There was a pause while we thought about this. "This is the stupidest romance ever," she said.

"Agreed."

At this point, we were less lovers than two stranded people on a desert island, poor refugees who just happened to have been thrown together in the same situation while everything else tried to kill them all at the same time. I wanted to know whose fault this was. I had a vague belief in God, but I didn't know if He was in charge of imprinting. Whoever it was that had done this, they had sure screwed up.

"Well," I said. "You up for a romantic double suicide?"

She smiled, which was good. That's what I'd wanted. "Not tonight. I have some laundry I need to do."

"Very sensible. Tomorrow, then? I'll bring the poison."

"So if the wolf with the scar is your dad," Tanya said after a moment. "Then he probably told you about the girl I killed."

"Apparently she was my cousin," I said carefully. I wasn't sure where she was going with this. "I never met her."

"I guess that's my fault."

I turned sharply to look at her, but her hair was falling in front of her face, screening me out. I reached out and tucked it behind her ear, and sure enough, there was guilt in her expression? Guilt for killing a werewolf? Not even the Cullens had gotten to that point until like three weeks ago. She did look almost surprised, as if it was something she'd never expected to feel bad about.

"Hey," I said, leaving my hand on the side of her face. "You know I forgive you for that, right?"

Her head came up. "Why would you forgive me for that?"

"You forgave me for Laurent, didn't you?"

"I didn't even _like _Laurent," she objected.

"Doesn't matter," I brushed aside. "We're even."

"It's just that I never thought of them as _people _before," she explained. "Not before you, I mean. I told you, we don't kill _people. _We have a serious problem with it. But you were just monsters who tried to kill us all the time."

"Can't help it," I said breezily. "Genetic imperative. You're the plague, we're the pest control."

She made a face. "Thanks."

"Anytime," I said, and kissed her on the top of her head. "But just heads up here, the impossible romance is about to get more impossible."

"I really don't see how it could."

"Well, Kenai is probably going to go back there and tell them I was with you," I informed her. It could always get worse. "I'm not technically _allowed _to see you, but he's been okay with it up until now, when he found out you were you. No offense."

"None taken."

"So now, as soon as he finishes his patrol—"

I paused. No, I didn't pause—I _stopped, _I crashed, I hit another thought like I was running head-on into a brick wall. I sat up and stared ahead of me, jolting hard enough that even Tanya noticed.

"What?" she said, concerned—probably noticing that I looked like something had been dropped on my head that weighed at least fifty pounds. Possibly more. "What is it?"

"His patrol," I repeated, and my memory raced back to find where the words had come from in the first place. Damon and Luke in the woods, arguing, planning.

_You know what we have to do, Luke. Next time he's on patrol—_

Next time he's on patrol. Which was now. And suddenly I knew what the rest of the sentence had to be.

_Next time he's on patrol, we'll kill him. _

"Excuse me," I said, getting up. "I think I have to go."


	24. Chapter 24

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey, somebody nominated me for the Twilight Awards, you wonderful people :). Don't know who that was, but thanks—"North" is nominated for Best Werewolf Portrayal, Best Side Pairing, Most Original Plot, and Best Imprinting, and if any of y'all have read "South", that's nominated for Best Characterization. Again, thanks, it's super flattering, and I'm sure I'll be begging for votes when the vote comes around. I like to win stuff :). Happy late New Year!

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Here was the annoying thing about being in love: you were totally convinced that the person you were in love with could do nothing wrong, and that was such a firm belief in your mind that when they did, inevitably, do something wrong, you suddenly had to scramble to convince yourself that it was actually something right. That way, you could keep on believing they were perfect, which was very important.

Right now, for example, I was trying to convince myself that Tanya's refusal to help me go save my dad was not selfishness and spite, but actually a healthy sense of self-preservation. And justice. And realism. Good for her.

"Tanya!" I yelled. Our first fight. Take a picture, put it in the scrapbook. "I need your help! _Please _come with me?"

"Did you just _see _him try to kill me?" she yelled back. "I know you just saw him just try to kill me."

"What about all that stuff you were saying about how we're people and you don't want to kill us—"

"I'm not killing him," she pointed out logically. "I'm just not going to save him."

"I don't have time for this," I growled. "I have to find them. Are you coming or not?"

She crossed her arms across her chest. There was fur lining the inside of her jacket, spiking out at her collar and cuffs in iced angles that crackled and broke as she moved. "Not."

"Fine! I'll save my father from the murderous plot on his life _by myself!"_

"Fine! You do that!"

Like every good fine! statement, this one was meant to lead to her saying she was sorry and she would help me after all, but of course it didn't and now it was too late to back down. Anyway I had no time. I was out of here.

By the time my feet hit the lakeshore, they were paws—I had no time to worry about the weirdness and fragility of our relationship (perhaps couples counseling should be looked into?), because somewhere around here and sometime very soon, someone was going to die. My eyes ears feet nose legs were all occupied in figuring out what could be done about that.

They wouldn't be anywhere near Paskiak, I was sure of that. Assassination attempts were bound to be noisy, and as long as they made sure no one else was in wolf form at the time, all they had to do was stay out of earshot. I needed to look for them _very _far away.

I caught Damon's scent right near the village and ran with it—it was strange how easy it was to tell the difference between their pack-scent and mine, the subtle pointed differences. I wondered who had come first, their pack or ours. I wondered how long they'd been here, how they'd gotten here, if there were any others. Considering how few covens of this size there were in the world, bound together by their vegetarian weirdness, I wouldn't be surprised if these were the only two packs in the world.

But Damon, what was Damon _thinking? _I yelled at him in my head to make up for not being able to run any faster. There was a natural order to a pack, and you just didn't _mess _with it, it just didn't _occur _to you at all. I didn't see how it could. If you were _that _unhappy with the Alpha, they couldn't you just—impeach him, or something? Wasn't there a challenge system? Again, I wasn't clear on this, because I'd never had to deal with it, but I just didn't see how you could come to the conclusion that you should kill him.

The only thing I could think was that Damon had never really cared about being Alpha. The only thing I could think was that he just wanted to kill Kenai.

Which was obviously not going to be okay with me. I thought I was starting to hear sounds ahead of me, sharp sawedged barks, snarls, and I looked up toward them and for the first time, saw where I was heading.

Denali ate the sky in front of me, all _but _the sky at this point with its closeness and its staggering mountainy hugeness. It was epic. It was eonic. Gods lived on top of it. This thing had been here forever and would be here forever, no matter what happened today or who did or did not die. Is it weird that I was a little jealous of it? I mean, if I was a mountain, I certainly wouldn't be having any of these problems, would I? Or if I couldn't be a mountain, then at least something like it—something very very big and impossible to ignore, impossible to destroy or even dent. Now _that _sounded like a good gig.

I was just hitting the foothills when I saw them, down in the flat cutout spaces between one hill and another, just up against the river where it wound around Denali—I could just barely tell it was a river by the way it twisted the snow on the ground, and it was probably frozen solid but I didn't plan to test it. I had other things to do. Like slide down the side of the foothill—even four-inch claws were no good on Alaska ice.

I had been looking for three wolves, Damon, Luke, and Kenai, and down there in the little valley there were at least five. Damon, I recognized, big and gray like the remains of a fire, and Luke, the wolf who looked like he was made from coathangers. Then two others who I didn't know on sight, one of which split off the moment I headed for them, spooked or maybe going for help. Hopefully not going for help. I was in enough trouble as it was. I'd been planning for only Luke and Damon, and even with the two of them I'd been planning on having to get lucky to beat them. And I'd been planning on Kenai's help—which, as the fifth wolf ran off and left a hole in their circle, I discovered was not going to be happening. Kenai was a very dark patch in the very white snow, surrounded by brighter patches of red, red spots like the carnations my mom used to plant in her garden and hand out to my friends when they had girl problems or needed to go to Homecoming. Except these red spots were not carnations, they were blood.

I was about to start yelling about Damon killing my father—it was a good line, though an unpleasant one, and not many people got to use it. I didn't get to use it—because just as I slid into Luke and snapped my teeth into his shoulder, yelling _You killed my—, _Kenai's eyes rolled open and he pushed himself unsteadily off the ground.

_Never mind, _I corrected. Turned out they hadn't killed my father after all, at least not yet, and probably not for lack of trying.

Damon had spotted me from the top of the hill, but he had his priorities, and seeing Kenai open his eyes was obviously a huge problem for him. I could understand why—if Kenai was conscious, he could start throwing Alpha orders around. They must have really gotten the jump on him in the first place if he never got the chance to stop them at all.

_Luke! _Damon yelled, slamming into Kenai, sending him sprawling to the edge of the river. There was a crosshatch of slowly-healing slashes on his neck and a bitemark above his spine, and there seemed to be something seriously wrong with his front leg, but he was by no means dead yet. We had some time—our natural enemies were vampires, we were made to be killed by _them, _not our own. _Deal with this!_

See, what I really needed to do was get over there and help Kenai, but I was currently a little occupied—or at least my teeth were, buried two inches into Luke. He couldn't do much more than turn and snap at me, trying to get my jaws open, he couldn't do it—but the other wolf could. I hadn't forgotten about him, but it was one thing at a time, and _they _both had only one thing to pay attention to. Me.

Wolf fights are actually very simple by nature—we haven't got the opposable thumbs that make human fights so complicated, haven't got the option of picking up a beer bottle or handy nearby chair. We've basically just got three moves: bite, claw, and slam. Now, of course we can use these moves in all sorts of interesting combinations, like an old arcade game, but that's really all there is to it.

Not that I'm resentful of this or anything, because when you're a monster wolf, your average bite, claw, or tackle packs a lot of punch. It's just that when you're trying to _describe _a wolf fight, it gets repetitive. Basically, what happened in this particular fight was: we fought. We bit. We clawed. I lost.

I'll admit, it was a _little _more complicated than that, but what else do you call it when at the end, both the legs on your right side are healing their way back from broken, and a person who you've fondly nicknamed Psycho Luke has two paws on your throat and pressing you back into the side of a hill so hard you can feel your windpipe bending.

The other wolf had run off to help Damon once it was clear I was no match for the both of them, and from the last glance of Kenai I'd seen, he was unconscious on the river and Damon was biting at his neck, trying to get at his spine through the thick fur. _Luke! _I yelled. The good thing about purely mental conversation was, it didn't matter _what _your body was doing—didn't matter if your mouth was full, didn't matter if you were halfway dead yourself—you could still yell at people. _Damon! …Other wolf, whoever the hell you are! You do _not _want to do this! _Luke, _seriously, he's your _father!

Luke didn't answer, just pushed down harder on my throat and cut my breathing from very strained to nothing at all. I searched for Kenai's mind in my thoughts, he was my _father, _I was sure I could find it but it wasn't there, I couldn't feel him, couldn't see him anymore with Luke blocking everything in front of me, and my own vision blocking itself out, rapidly going black. _Some rescue, _I thought ironically to myself. I was going to die, and it wasn't even going to help anybody.

Suddenly, something swept into the side of my vision and smashed into Luke, sending him tumbling off me, breath suddenly rushing into my throat so hard that I was twisting around, coughing, trying to scramble upright so my windpipe could heal. I had my head down, coughing, but I had to see what it was, I had my suspicions—

Sure enough, it was Tanya, holding a huge branch that looked nearly broken clean through with the force of her hit on Luke—she still held it as she circled across from him, suddenly panicked and growling with a high, threatened pitch to the sound. Worked-up Luke was not exactly something I wanted to go toe to toe with, but it was certainly better than a Luke who'd just killed me. And God, was I happy to see her.

"Do not even start with me," she warned testily as she moved across from Luke, looking for openings. She couldn't hear me but she was starting to learn what I would say. "I am not here for your stupid father, I'm here for _you. _I knew after he was dead, you weren't going to be able to get yourself out of this—"

_Dead? _I said instinctively, even though I knew she couldn't explain. _He's not dead, he's fine, he's right over—_

_Don't kid yourself, Embry. _It was the first time I'd heard Damon speak since I'd gotten here, but I recognized the voice at once—a mouthful of broken glass. I looked and saw him walking toward us, tail switching slowly behind his back. Over his shoulder I could see the dark patch that was Kenai, and too much red to look like carnations anymore. To look like anything but blood. Damon was coming towards us with the other wolf right behind, obviously unconcerned with Kenai anymore. _He's dead. You didn't do a thing, you couldn't stop me, and he's dead and you can't do anything about it. You have no idea how long—you have _no _idea. You can take it from me, kid—your father is dead. _


	25. Chapter 25

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 300 reviews! You guys are unbelievable, you really blow me away. I love, love, love all the feedback, it is my favorite. And I love you guys. That is all.

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It hit me suddenly, and with such clarity that it literally took my breath away, like strong mint or cold water—this was a bad idea.

I didn't mean going to save my dad—though that was seeming less and less intelligent as the three wolves closed around me and I turned my back to Tanya's, suddenly sick that I'd gotten her into this, that I'd asked for her help.

I mean, obviously I needed it—I'd always known I was not the best at this bite-and-kill thing, I was probably more like third best or something, and plus Damon and Luke had the force of their craziness behind them. They were To Be Reckoned With. And now Tanya was in on it and she could get hurt. I was still craning my neck around Luke to look at Kenai on the river, he couldn't _really _be dead, could he? He couldn't really be dead. Either way, I didn't want Tanya to end up lying on the ice like that.

But that wasn't what I meant when I said this was a bad idea. I meant _this _was a bad idea, THIS. All of this. Alaska. This whole stupid road trip, this damn Lifetime movie quest. I should have never left Washington, who did I think I _was? _I was missing work. I had finals. I had met my dad and that had meant what, exactly? It had solved no problems. It had given me questions that I never had and multiplied my real questions into a hundred more questions. What had I done here but screw things up?

But it was the kind of realization that comes right as you're barreling over the edge of the cliff, and looking down suddenly realizing where you're going to land. Way too late for preventative action—time to deal with what you've gotten yourself into.

I turned and bumped my head into Tanya's side, as a kind of apology and reassurance, and she put her hand on my neck. "Yeah," she said. "This is great. Any chance we want to just run away?"

_They'll just come after us. _Damon and Luke had finally lived up to their promise of simmering evil and insanity (add longstanding malice and bring to a boil), and it was just going to have to end here, was all.

"No, that probably wouldn't work," she echoed the thoughts she couldn't hear. "Jeez. I really must love you or something."

I was thrilled to hear her say it—possibly it was the first time it had ever made it out of her mouth—but I had to push those thoughts aside as Luke suddenly, spectacularly, boiled over.

_Luke—! _Damon tried to get in as he jumped for me—I was pretty sure he wanted to do some more villainous ranting—but Luke was _gone. _He hit me like a shark, snapping for the base of my spine like any good predator, but before I could even try to shake him off, Tanya had her hands on him, time enough to drag him off and throw him to the riverbed before Damon and the other wolf closed her in a quick pincer movement, trapping her against the slope of the hill. I hooked my head under Damon's ribs and flipped him straight over on my way to Luke, and he scrambled up and followed me, which was what I'd wanted even if it wasn't technically a smart idea at all.

I hesitated a moment before I stepped out onto the river—rivers were _more _shallow than lakes, right? So they would be _more _likely to freeze over, right?—but then I ran right onto it. Luke was out there, and so was my dad. I still hadn't had a chance to see him. To make sure that he wasn't dead.

I had to admit, as I made it to his body—he didn't look good. The scratches on his shoulder hadn't healed, they _should _have healed, and the bite on his neck was—deep. In the middle of all the fur and muscle and blood I could see white pieces of bone, and I knew instantly, instinctively, that bone was not a thing I should be seeing, not there.

_Dad? _I bent my front legs to lean down to him, and the right one protested, still injured, but I was not paying attention because I was looking to see if he was breathing and freaking out because the answer looked like no. _Dad! _

He'd been gone most of my life. He'd been a vague Dad-shaped shadow in the past and not my present, I hadn't _known _him, he hadn't _been _there. So did I get to know him for five days? Was that the deal? Everyone else had dads. Everyone I knew got a dad, _why _not me? I'd just found him, why would this happen? What was I doing wrong?

It wasn't fair. I mean, I know that was sort of a given for being alive and all, but this was way past the normal cosmic levels of unfair. This was somebody's tragic ending to a play, this was out-of-the-question ridiculous. And I was abruptly, absolutely furious about it.

Fortunately, when you're in the middle of a life-or-death battle, you get a lot of good opportunities to get your anger out. I could hear the drum of Damon's paws behind me, and I turned just as he jumped at me, bit straight into his leg, and used his momentum to toss him like a doll, straight onto the river. He seemed pretty surprised by this, couldn't blame him really. It was just that a moment ago, Damon and Luke had the edge on me—in terms of skill we were pretty well-matched, but they had that extra notch of blistering psychotic anger. Well, now I was angry too.

_You killed my father, _I said, stalking after him as he scrambled to get footing on the ice. _You killed my father. _

It was quite a bit less satisfying to say than I'd expected. That was the trouble with these sorts of things—if you've gotten to the point where you actually mean them, you're not really in a position to enjoy them at all.

Anyway, Damon wasn't the type to be intimidated by that kind of statement or that kind of purposeful walk. He was more likely to be proud of what he'd done. _Yes, I did, didn't I? _he said with a wolf grin, all teeth and tongue. _And I'm glad I did it. I feel _better_. _

_Oh, I wouldn't speak too soon, _I snarled, and leapt for his throat.

There was a sharp yelp of pain behind us, and I caught a glimpse of the third wolf running away from Tanya, didn't blame him, there seemed to be something wrong with his neck that I was sure was Tanya's fault. Even odds now, and I was personally of the opinion that she counted for about half an army.

She was on the ice quick enough to get Luke out of the middle of our fight, catching him by the scruff of the neck and yanking him straight out of the air. _"_Embry!" she yelled as I ducked a swipe from Damon's claws. "The river—you have to get off the—"

She was cut off by Luke's head driving straight into her side, using it like a battering ram, why not, it wasn't like he had to worry about losing brain cells. But I got the general gist of it—get off the river. I was now thinking it might be less than solid, and that made me sort of panicked.

Damon didn't seem to catch on quite as fast—as I turned to head for the riverbank, he bit into my neck and dragged me around again, sweeping long arcs into the snow. _Don't you ever _listen? I yelled. _You don't _think, _Damon, I don't know what's wrong with you. _

_Thought straight enough to kill Kenai, didn't I? _He always had to come back to that, like a kid who had just won the spelling bee.

_Yeah, that's exactly what I meant, _I said. _You killed your brother. Good job. What are you going to do now? _

_Now? _The thought actually seemed to stop him for a moment, and I knew I'd been right—he hadn't really thought about it, hadn't thought about it at all. But it only stopped him for a moment, and then he recovered. Very simple thought patterns, that guy. _Now I'm going to kill _you_. _

He stepped backward to brace himself for a leap, his hind leg landing in a patch of frozen reeds growing through the ice. Then, quite unexpectedly for both of us, his foot went straight through, punching a jagged hole. A tiny fissure raced up the river, cracking the ice under my feet.

Ice,I remembered with sudden clarity. I'd read it in the Encyclopedia Britannica, volume II, C-L. Ice weakens around patches of plants because they soak up the sun and weaken the surrounding structure. Weaken it so that under pressure—it breaks.

The ice broke. It broke in sections, huge geometric shapes shattering piece by piece, and it started with the piece directly under Damon. His foot slammed through the ice, then his other foot, then the ground he thought he was standing on was no more than ice cubes and a lot of subzero water. It was generally difficult to stand on water; he didn't.

I wasn't sticking around to watch—I was a pretty good swimmer, I _did _live on the coast, but falling through a frozen lake had nothing to do with swimming. It had to do with freezing water and with ice closing over your head, and I could feel it breaking under me as I ran. It was breaking up fast, the running water eager to break its shell, _running _water, of course that was why it wouldn't freeze through, what was I _thinking _stepping onto it? I hit a frozen edge awkwardly and it started to break off, I had to push off ice that was already shattering under me, jump to the bank—

It was only after I had my feet back on solid, unbreakable ground that I looked back for Damon. At first I didn't see him at all—then a flash of dark gray fur above the choppy river surface—then nothing.

Now that was fair.

There was a bright flare of emotion in my head, and it broke me away from staring at the river, searching for what must have come from Luke, he was the only one left. That was the thing with mind-to-mind communication, it didn't always come in words. This thought, for example, sounded a lot like five exclamation points in a row.

I turned and saw Tanya on the ground, somehow Luke had managed to knock her over—God, he was like a coiled _spring, _how could there be so much energy in that little twisty body?—and he was lunging for her, snapping at the arm she raised in front of her.

_Stop! _I yelled without thinking, just out of an instinctive desire not to see Tanya get her arm bitten off. But the word sounded suddenly different in my mind—the same kind of difference as when I was thirteen and woke up one morning with a deeper voice—a thousand new layers to the sound of it, a sudden timbre.

And he stopped. His shut his mouth and we both stopped there, staring at each other in surprise. _Stop, _I tried again, but the sound wasn't there—I searched back quickly in my mind and found the switch of it, pulling authority in to me like I was grabbing fistsfuls of it. _Get away from her. Don't hurt her. _

He didn't want to obey me—that much was obvious in the teeth-gritted tension of limbs, the low growl shuddering through his scarecrow frame. But he did it. Slowly, as if animated by strings attached to his feet—he backed off. And we'd both figured out by now exactly what this was.

_I'll kill you, _he said, no restraints on his thoughts like there were on his body. _I'll kill you. _

_I'm the Alpha. _I tried to make it sound convincing. It seemed to be true, I might as well try to believe it. _You'll do what I say. _

But of course Tanya heard none of this. All she saw was a sudden advantage, weird and unexplained, yes, but she wasn't the type to look it in the mouth. She moved like a rattlesnake, slamming Luke back into a tree hard enough that I could hear the crack of his head hitting wood, and see him going instantly limp. Tanya wasted no time—she knew how fast we healed, so she got there and got her heads on either side of his head, twisting.

I don't know why I did it. As long-lost brothers go, Luke was about as bad as you could get. I didn't _like _him. He tried to kill me all the time. But I'd watched my father die, and I watched a person fall through a frozen river and drown. I just didn't want to happen again—not even to Luke.

I slid between Tanya and Luke, shoving her carefully back just enough to break her grip. She glared at me, and punched my shoulder way less hard than she could have.

"What? Why?" She was getting pretty good at this guessing what I was thinking thing—then again, this wasn't exactly a tricky one. "He's _part _of it, Embry. He's dangerous."

_I know, _I said ruefully. _I'm just—not sure he can help it. I don't want him to die. _

"You're hopeless," she said, rolling her eyes. "Well, we should get him back to Paskiak, then, _they _can deal with him. And your dad's body—"

I had forgotten. Well, no, I hadn't forgotten, but it had temporarily taken backseat to trying not to die. Now I looked back to the river with horror—he'd been _on _the river when the ice had gone.

To my relief, I saw his body at once—on the far side of the running water, lying on unbroken ice. He was still there. He was still above water.

Which, of course, presented a whole new set of problems.

"So," Tanya said. "Do you want to go get him, or shall I?"


	26. Chapter 26

This had not worked out the way I'd planned it to. In fact, I was coming to the horrible conclusion that things almost never did.

Things were supposed to start making sense when you grew up—that was the deal, that's why you agreed to do it at all. That's what it meant to be an adult, that you got taller and that you got to have a handle on the world. There was the assumption that maybe there was a kind of epiphany that hit you one day, some simple key to the universe. Well, I kept getting older, and still no epiphany, still no control. In fact, it seemed to me that things were actually getting worse.

Certainly if I'd had a choice, I never would have wanted to be walking out of the woods into Paskiak with my dead father in my arms, my vampire girlfriend carrying my dead uncle on my right, and my homicidal brother on my left, seething quietly and trying to figure out how to kill me. No, that wasn't really something I'd planned on. Probably couldn't have if I'd tried.

Paskiak reminded me of La Push in some ways—the small boxy houses clustered together like a handful of tossed stones. Only in Paskiak, people tended to stay indoors, and for good reason. If you walked outside after showering here, your hair froze solid and snapped off. That kind of thing tended to promote indoorsiness.

This was why, when I walked into town, the only person there to see me was Kira. She had a softball glove in one hand, but the ball had bounced away somewhere when she'd failed to catch it, taking her eyes off it in favor of the extraordinary, extraordinarily creepy scene emerging in front of her. The three of us barefoot in the snow, carrying our corpses, the blood on us turning the color of heated metal under the first strokes of sunrise.

If I'd seen us on an Art History test, I would have labeled us as Early Gothic. Or maybe Bad Acid Trip.

---

"Cause of death?" McKenna said coolly, staring at her clipboard. The sparkle and flirt of the other day was gone, squashed flat by the two bodies on the table. Damon's was sick blue from the cold—it had taken us almost an hour to find him, and even then it had to be Tanya who went in after his body. Even at a hundred and three degrees, my body couldn't take the river, Damon was clear proof of that.

She'd been wonderful all morning, halfway to every solution before I'd gotten around to thinking of the problem. Even now, I knew she was hovering as close as possible to Paskiak, probably with that same worried expression she'd had for hours—she couldn't care less about werewolf politics, but for some incredible reason she did care about me.

Of course, I didn't say any of this to McKenna. What I did say was, "I didn't kill him, if that's what you mean."

McKenna gave me a hard, glassy stare that said yes, that was exactly what she meant, she had ears just like anyone and she had heard the rumors. It was astounding how quickly the village could go from empty to teeming if you just showed up with a vampire and a couple of corpses. They were like ants.

"Could you just tell me the cause of death, please?" she repeated. Somewhere in the course of our conversation, McKenna had managed to convey the fact that her closest sister, Sasha, was married to Damon. _Had _been married to Damon, was now a young and very unexpected widow. McKenna, clearly, wanted to know why.

"Well, Damon tried to kill Kenai," I explained, keeping my voice as level as possible. "And as you can see, he succeeded. We fought on the river, it broke, and Damon fell in."

"Uh huh," McKenna said, scribbling on her clipboard.

I felt the absence of my hackles, which definitely would have risen at her tone. "What do you mean, _uh huh_?"

"Nothing," she said. "It's just that I don't know if everyone is going to believe that."

"Look," I said, not even bothering with the voice-steadiness anymore. "There is no _way _it has escaped all of your attention that Luke and Damon are completely _psychotic." _

"Of course it hasn't," she said coolly. "Luke and Damon have—had—Severe Personality Disorder."

"I agree," I said vehemently.

"No," she said. "It's a psychological disorder, Embry, it's called Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder, DSPD. It causes them to react more aggressively to outside stimuli, it's not their fault."

"Fine," I said. Clinical disorder. Sounded about right. "So then people would believe me if I said they killed Kenai, because that's completely something they would do, right? So people will understand?"

She smiled a smile like a fillet knife, sharp thin bright. "Don't be so sure, Embry. They may be total lunatics," she said. "But they're _our _lunatics."

---

The first thing I did was assemble the whole pack together in wolf form and instruct them in my best Alpha voice that they were not, under any circumstances, to try to kill me. I felt that this was important to get out of the way as soon as possible. I couldn't control the people who weren't in the pack, but the most serious threats were all right here with their teeth and claws, trying to control their snarling or at least keep it to a polite minimum.

After that I really didn't know what to do, so I just sent them away and sat on a rock all by myself, waiting for Sam to sign on.

As I saw it, my main problems were these: first, I didn't want to be Alpha. Oh God, I did not want to be Alpha. I felt like the pressure was bending me out of shape already, I didn't want to be in _charge _of people, and especially not people who hated me. I was looking around frantically for the nearest way out.

Which lead directly to the second problem: if I were to abdicate, the job would go directly to Luke. And as little as I knew or much cared about these people, I just couldn't bring myself to do that to them. I was stuck.

My other problem, of course, was that my father was dead and I'd never really known him at all and it was my fault. How exactly it was my fault had not yet been completely worked out, but I couldn't get rid of the idea that it had to be. I mean, Damon and Luke would have still probably gone ahead and attacked him if I'd never shown up, but there was a vague sense that I should have been able to stop it. That this was the reason I'd been sent here at all, and I'd screwed it up. I mean, what else were sons good for if they didn't save your life? I'd never been any good to him, not ever, not once. And now he was just dead.

I was aware of Tanya as she melted out of the woods and came to sit just over my shoulder, not talking, not touching me, just—being there. So that I could smell her or see her if I wanted, if I just turned around. She didn't even move but she was like rain—I could feel my skin soaking her up, healing slowly because she existed and was watching to see if I was all right. It was enough.

At one point, I heard someone else come and join her, the chemical choke of another vampire, but it was only Rosalie. I didn't turn.

"Tanya," she said. "You should come home."

"I'm busy, Rose," she had answered, impatiently.

"What, is he going to fall apart if you take your eyes off him?" I could tell Rosalie was doing her best to be soothing and convincing, but she couldn't blunt her edge all the way. "You haven't been home in two days, Tanya."

"I'll come home," Tanya said, carving each word out carefully like an ice sculptor, "when I want to come home. When he doesn't need me."

"Because _that's _going to happen," she said, all aristocratic scorn. I heard her footsteps headed away, fortunately hadn't decided to destroy us all before she left, or anything. Tanya didn't make any noise at all, seemed to know that I needed very badly to think. "It's not healthy, Tanya," Rosalie said, stopped just on the edge of the clearing and wanting that one last word, wanting her barbs just as far in as possible. "It is not all right."

Tanya didn't care about last words. She just slid up next to me and let her feet dangle over the edge of the rock, moving right into the sun so that it broke into a thousand pieces on her skin, crystal-prisming rainbows.

I went through a phase where I thought I was an artist, where I thought my mom's talent had handed down, and I used to always be trying to paint angels. I never could get them right, I wasn't any good—my angels always turned out blobby and deformed. It was only just now that I realized that what I'd been trying to paint was her.

Suddenly, I felt Sam's mind appear in mine, like the click and flare of a cigarette lighter. Quieter than I was used to lately—just him and not the rest of the pack all trying to yell over each other. He didn't say anything either, right away, just flipped back through my memories like he had his fingers on a Rolodex. I felt sorry for him—I barely still believed all of this, and I'd been _living _it.

_Well, _he said finally, with the tone of the first Red Cross unit that came onto the aftermath of a tornado.

_Yeah, _I said sheepishly. I knew exactly what he meant. Well. Yikes. Tornado.

_So, _he said after a moment. _Correct me if I'm wrong, but—you look like you need some help. _


	27. Chapter 27

I'd been _expecting_ the Charge of the Light Brigade. That was just our style, my Washington pack—lots of enthusiasm, not much finesse. We were young, and strong, and very impressed with ourselves. We liked to smash things. The moment Sam knew what kind of trouble I'd gotten myself into, I expected to be knee-deep in La Push werewolves, scouring the Alaska landscape for a fight.

But of course I hadn't told the whole pack, I'd told Sam. And that made a difference. Sam was _mature. _Sam was almost depressingly mature. I got the constant feeling that he was the chaperone to our third-grade field trip, the sort of den mother, if you will. He wasn't more than a year older that most of us, but somehow he wasn't a friend. We never joked with him, never invited him to Friday night movies, he was just—Alpha. I guess I'd never really thought about it before.

He was _so _solid, though, he was bedrock, and in a situation like this I couldn't imagine a person I'd rather ask for help. He didn't suggest the Light Brigade method. He didn't rush into anything at all. I sat there patiently while he weighed possible options, and trusted that he'd pick the good one.

In some strange way, he was still my Alpha. Technically he probably wasn't anymore—I doubted that he could give me a command, for instance—but I did seem to be stuck in some sort of two-pack limbo, tapped into the pack mind of both. I seemed to still be plugged into La Push, thank goodness, I'd been worried about that—but at my short meeting I'd found that I was in on the Paskiak mind as well. I wished I had thought to search for which of them had been the other wolves at the ambush. It bothered me to know that somewhere in my pack there were men who had made a good try at killing me.

Sam had eventually concluded that he needed to talk to the La Push Council, and that he would get back to me and to hang in there. Which had reminded me that I needed to talk to my own Council—McKenna had said that they wanted to talk to me, and I'm sure they did, but I'd thought it important that I first made sure that I wasn't going to get killed or go crazy, or both.

Trouble was, being Alpha didn't seem to hold the kind of weight I'd expected—I mean, what was the point, anyway, if the Elders were just going to stick you outside the Council room, kicking your feet like a kid waiting for the Principal while they decided what to do with you. Another sudden insight into Sam—this was how it was to have power that the adults around you still thought they should control. This was how it was to convince those with experience to ignore that you were seventeen and see what else you were as well.

I tossed around the idea of storming in there and demanding their attention, but who was I kidding. I wasn't a stormer or a demander, or basically anything effective at all. I'd been handed all this power but I still felt like a kid dressing up in his dad's overlarge, untied boots.

I'd never been inside this particular house, but I gathered that it was where Kira lived. I gathered this mostly when Kira came and sat next to me in that intrusive, friendly way she had.

"That arm looks terrible," she told me, because I don't think Kira believed in saying hello. Anyway I had to agree with her—it had been a leg when I was a wolf, but it had translated into a fantastically bruised, teethmarked bicep as a human. "Did you have McKenna look at it?"

"I think that letting McKenna get her hands on me might not be the best idea at the moment," was my opinion.

"No," she agreed. "I guess everyone hates you right now." Jeez. Kill one measly guy, and suddenly the whole town is grabbing their pitchforks and torches. I sighed. "Except me," Kira pointed out. "I don't hate you. I don't even want to kill you or anything."

"I appreciate that, Kira," I said. "And what did I do to earn your forgiveness?"

"I never liked Damon," she informed me. "He was crazy. I liked Kenai. And I like you. I think everyone totally overreacted to the Tanya thing, and now they're overreacting about this too. As far as I can see, you still haven't done anything wrong."

I was actually touched by her support, really. Probably I was just starving for approval and grabbing at crumbs, but I swear I could have kissed her. "Kira," I said. "Do you know that I love you?"

She outsighed me by a mile, her whole body heaving with the exhale. "You do _not. _Nobody does. Do you know that all of my sisters are imprinted except for me? Even Lela's imprinted, and she's only sixteen."

"Oh. Well." I didn't exactly feel qualified to give romantic advice—after all, I'd been the one running away from love screaming at the top of my lungs. I couldn't really sympathize, Strange that a girl her age would be so eager to dive headfirst into forever—but then again, she did have a point about the extreme paired-off-ness of the rest of the village. I suppose it could get lonely. "It'll work out," I said vaguely, patting her on he head. "Someday, your prince will come…"

Her immediate reaction told me that I definitely had no future as a relationship counselor—but I only had to deal with it for a minute, because the door swung abruptly open and in it stood Speaker, as ominous as any Principal I'd ever known. "We're ready for you, Embry," he intoned in that voice like lightning striking marble.

"Be nice, Daddy," Kira scolded, and I suddenly the stare was going the other direction.

"He's your—"

"My dad, yeah," she confirmed. "He's okay once you get used to him."

"Thanks, sweetheart," he rumbled. "I appreciate it. Embry?"

"Coming," I grouched. Something had to be done about the balance of power here.

At least it was just the Elders this time and not the whole town—because I don't think I could have faced the whole singalong campfire thing again. Then again, it could be argued that eight men in a badly-lit room, watching me over steepled fingers, was in some ways even worse. I instantly got the bad case of stage fright, and the jitters. I tried to sit still on the provided chair and not think about how they were all looking at me.

I didn't know most of the men I saw there, though like it was in La Push how they all seemed to be cut from the same mold—black hair, black eyes, sharp native eagle bones. And they were the Elders, after all, all looking over forty and most even older. Needless to say these weren't the ones who running patrols every night. They didn't have to do what I said—which sucked, because that was basically the only thing I had going for me. There wasn't really any backup charm or wit in my arsenal, it was basically just—me. Charmless Embry.

"Look," Speaker jumped right in. "This has happened very unexpectedly for all of us, so we're trying to deal with it as we go. You're going to have to work with us. If you're going to be our Alpha, we're going to have to set some boundaries. We know you're angry, but you're going to need to understand the structure of the—"

"Wait a second," I interrupted. "I don't want to be Alpha."

That derailed him completely, like a dime on the train tracks—he stopped cold in his introductory lecture, staring at me. "You what?" asked the guy on the end, a salt-and-pepper fortysomething who I remembered way back from my short-lived intervention. Good times.

"I don't want to be Alpha," I repeated. Very important to get this out of the way right off the bat.

"Oh," Speaker said. "Well then."

They had the faces of people who had planned it all out, and then discovered that they plan suddenly didn't apply. It made people nervous. In this instance, though, I'm pretty sure they were relieved. "Why?" Salt-and-Pepper asked me, just for clarification, I think.

"I don't live here," I said blankly. "I live in Washington I'm not even graduated yet, I can't _do _this."

"I completely agree," said a man who looked like a hammerhead shark. I imagined him with fins and teeth.

"To tell you the truth, Embry, we're thrilled to hear it," said Speaker. "We thought you were going to be trouble."

I knew I should probably have been offended at how completely relieved they seemed to be, but I was relieved myself so I didn't bother. "So," I said, leaning forward with my arms on my legs. "I can just—abdicate, right?" I wasn't even sure that was the right word—I was pretty sure that was for kings and feudal heirs, not little screwed-up werewolf packs. Also I wasn't exactly sure _how. _I'd have to ask Jacob.

"No!" said Hammerhead, sitting up straight. Good to see that his hostility extended in more directions than just me. "You can't do that. Then Luke will be Alpha."

"Hey!" objected one guy, I knew this one, this was Ethan—but I was just glad to hear that there were people around her who were willing to talk about Luke in that tone, even if Ethan wasn't one of them.

"Shut up," Hammerhead snapped at him. "We all know that this pack _could not _survive Luke as an Alpha. We're going to have to think of a different way."

"Yes," said Speaker.

"Yes," I said.

And then we sat there for a few minutes, with me in the middle getting stared at. "So," Speaker said. "Any ideas?"


	28. Chapter 28

I waited for her.

I don't know how long, I didn't have a watch. But I watched the moon move across the sky, I watched it go from the tips of the trees to the middle of the stars, and by the time it got above my head, she still wasn't there. We only had half a sky left.

She told me that she'd meet me at the lake tonight, just like she had the past two nights—she was always there before me, by the time I got here she was always waiting. If she wasn't here, then something was wrong. If she wasn't coming, then something was wrong, but maybe in a different way.

You see, I was still waiting to wake up from the dream. Tanya—well, she was wonderful, and that as the problem. She was out of my league. Nothing special about me and everything special about her, she was like a perfect personals ad. I had seen celebrities that were less pretty than her, she could be pretty as a full-time _job. _There were people with makeup artists and hairdressers and plastic surgeons who would never come close to being as pretty as she was first thing in the morning.

So to some extent, our relationship consisted of me not believing how lucky I was, and waiting fearfully for her to come to her senses. If she chose to not show up one day, my inclination was to believe that it was because she didn't want to. At least that was what I should have believed.

It's a strange thing, being imprinted. It's a strange bond, somewhere halfway between being identical twins and being members of the same chain gang. I wouldn't call it a mind-to-mind connection, exactly, not in the same way it was when I was running with the pack. But there was a definite—_consciousness. _An awareness of the other person, a close following of their thoughts and feelings so that you could be there in the instant that they needed. I don't know what it was, but whatever it was it was bugging me.

I should have gone home. If she didn't want to come, she didn't want to come—I couldn't control her, she wasn't even all human and I couldn't stick her down like a pinboard insect. I had to give her space, right? I had to trust her, right? Only I couldn't get it out of my head that that wasn't the reason she hadn't come. That weird sixth sense was tugging at me, telling me that something, something somewhere to do with her, was _wrong. _

I headed to the glacier. It was a pretty stupid idea, and I was pretty positive it was going to get me killed or something, but this was the direction I felt that I should head. Logically stupid but it felt right—and that was the kind of thing that got you killed.

I caught her scent before I even got off the glacier, hot through the snow like I could almost see it, blazing up forestfire at the power of her. I followed it down through the woods, into a part of the woods that I recognized. Last time I'd been here, there had been blood all over the snow, and a dead deer. I recognized the birches, and the way they clustered like they were huddling for warmth, the poor pale skinny things. Maybe this was a place she came often—I wouldn't blame her, it was a beautiful place. And it matched her.

I saw her first, standing out in the woods with snow up to her calves, but I didn't miss that she wasn't the only person there. Slightly concerning, because most of the people that could be with her were people who hated me—though Tanya had told me that Carmen and Eleazar were softening to me, still that didn't mean that they wouldn't rip my head off if it came down to it. Soft was an entirely comparative term when it came to vampires.

It took me another few steps to realize that the person standing with her wasn't a girl—and that he was holding her hands. Unless he was her brother or a very close cousin, I had a serious problem with that. I stopped on the edge of the woods and told myself that it was not a good idea to go in there before I knew what was going on.

Turns out, though, it was also not a good idea to know what was going on at all. Because what was going on was this: Edward Cullen was standing in the birch trees, holding hands with the girl I loved.

There was something wrong with this—besides the obvious, of course. He didn't love her, I knew he didn't love her, he loved _Bella. _Fact. What was he doing? Why was he _here? _There was no mistaking him, not that penny-copper hair or that stance or that smile, but _what was he doing here? _

I stood still mostly from shock, but it turned out to be a good thing. I didn't interrupt them and so they kept going, and I got to stand there and watch. "Tanya, we can't talk about this. I know we haven't seen each other in a long time, but—"

"Ten months, two weeks, and eighteen days," Tanya said in a frozen-solid voice.

"Something like that," Edward continued. "I'm sorry, Tanya. You must have heard about Bella—"

"Yes, I heard about _Bella,_" Tanya said with a bitterness that I hadn't heard from her in so long, not since the first time I'd seen her and grabbed her hand and she'd _looked _at me, her eyes in a thousand pieces. "What is it about this girl, Edward? What does she have that I don't have?"

"_Tanya—"_

"That's a real question, Edward," she sliced back. "I want to know. I want to know what it was that I did wrong."

"Tanya, you are an amazing girl," Edward said firmly. "It's nothing personal. It's nothing _about _you, it's just that—sometimes two people just fit. And sometimes other people _don't, _no matter how hard they want to, no matter how much they think they should."

"I want to know _why,_" Tanya said fiercely.

"I don't even know why I'm here," he said, sounding tired. "Rosalie said—"

She couldn't hardly let him finish a whole sentence—not for fear of what the sentence was going to be. "She's human," Tanya said, with the fixedness of a person who's thought about this a lot, and for a very long time. "She'll die."

"Is that a threat?" Edward said lightly, pulling his hands away.

"_No,_" she said. "I'm just saying—when she dies, I'll still be here. I just wanted to let you know."

"Tanya," he said, and it sounded like he was saying _sorry. _

"I love you, Edward." She said it the way I used to say it—with the tone of a person who just wants it said, who thinks that it will make them feel better if they get it out.

As she said it, I saw Edward's eyes slide across to me, catching me out where I thought I was hidden. It was surprising, but I shouldn't have been surprised—he _could _hear thoughts after all, and that meant that he could hear my thoughts when Tanya told him she loved him. They had gone something like this: _WHAT? NO NO NO! YOU DON'T LOVE HIM TANYA YOU DON'T LOVE HIM WHYYYYYYYYYYYY??? _

So he looked back at me, and I started, and pulled back, and turned and ran. I don't know what I was running from, I wasn't afraid of Edward, we'd always gotten along okay, and he wasn't the type to freak out over a little eavesdropping. No, I was definitely not running from him. But I was running.

I only stopped when a blonde woman appeared in front of me, suddenly solidly in my path, and for a half hopeful second I thought it was Tanya. Maybe she'd seen me, maybe she was sorry, maybe she'd come to say I didn't mean that, I don't love him I love _you, _I meant it when I said it. Let me explain.

It wasn't Tanya. The shade of blond was brighter and there was no red in it, just corn-gold all the way down her shoulders. Red boots. Glare that could kill a person from a hundred feet. Rosalie.

"What do you _want?_" I said, more rudely than one should technically be with Rosalie Hale, but I was having a bad night.

"Where are you going?" she asked back.

I was not in the mood. "What do you want?" I repeated.

"Where are you going?"

"Look, I asked first," I snapped. "Can you just get out of my way?"

"You saw him, didn't you?" she guessed shrewdly, probably basing her guess on my facial expression, which if it looked anything like it felt was probably something very like a Halloween gargoyle mask.

"If you mean Edward, then yes," I told her. "What the hell is he doing here?"

"He's here because I asked him to come here," she said, and her voice had bright ring of satisfaction.

"You _asked _him to—" I choked on the rest of the words. I just could not understand her, I couldn't _handle _her and especially not right now.

"I asked him to come here," she confirmed.

The obvious question—the only question I had. "_Why?_"

"For Tanya," Rosalie told me. "Because I thought she needed a reminder of who she is and what she loves. Because I'm her friend."

"I don't understand. I don't know what you're talking about. What does any of this have to do with you being her _friend?_"

"Because friends don't let friends ruin their lives, Embry," she said sharply. "Not for _you._"

Oh. Well. Now at least I knew what she was shooting for, and who. "So this is about me, huh?" I snarled, having solidly identified the threat and it was _her, _she was standing between me and Tanya in the most vicious of ways. "You want to get her away from me _so _badly that you call _him? _Do you know what it's _doing _to her to see him again?"

"It's helping her come to her senses, I know that much!"

"It's cruel, Rosalie_. He doesn't love her_."

"It's for her own good," Rosalie blazed. "She doesn't have to _be _with you, Embry! Don't you understand? It's not the _same _for her! It's forever for you but her—she can fight it. She _should _fight it. She's too good to end up with you."

She was saying everything I'd ever thought in the mean back parts of my mind, the doubts that I'd had, but I was in love with her and the rest of me was saying no_. _No way. "I _love _her." It was the fact that had been overriding all other facts, it was still the most important.

"Don't you see that doesn't _matter?_ What can you give her, Embry? You can give her your love? Yeah? What else? You're _seventeen. _You're not even out of high school. And you're a _werewolf. _This is all some huge cosmic joke, and it ends now."

"But I love her." I felt that my mind had shut down under her onslaught, and this was all I had left. I was sure about this one.

"And she loves Edward," Rosalie said, slamming down on that last fact like she was smashing a bug under her heel. "She's loved him for a long time."

"I've loved her for—"

"Six days," she said. "Leave her alone, Embry. She's better off without you. Just leave her alone."


	29. Chapter 29

I wasn't Romeo anymore.

To be Romeo, you have to have a Juliet—a girl who's willing to wake up in the mausoleum with you and love you enough that it kills her. I still wasn't crazy about that part of the story, but the fact was I was out a Juliet. The story had changed. I was loving her and she wasn't loving me back, so that made, me—what? The Phantom of the Opera? The Hunchback of Notre Dame?

I didn't like any of those comparisons, and I didn't like the endings of those stories. Was it true what Rosalie said, that Tanya could fight it, that she could make herself not love me? Was it true that she should try? Was I really hurting her here, was I eclipsing her future with my own worthlessness as a mate?

I somewhat bought that. Not all the way, because she would still be worse off hanging onto Edward, but I still wasn't sure I was the right one for her either. We didn't match. I tried to imagine us dancing or walking hand in hand—the _looks _we would get, the how-did-she-end-up-with-_him _looks. I'd read a book about this once, about successful relationships—my mom had it laying around, I was bored, and this was before I knew I was a werewolf and my relationship issues were going to be quite different than I expected. Anyway, the book had said that successful relationships had people who _matched—_who were about the same level of attractive, who were about as smart as each other, about as motivated. The ones that weren't matched—when someone was way smarter, way prettier—well, they didn't work.

But I couldn't just walk away. No matter how much Rosalie yelled at me and how much I believed her, I wasn't just going to turn around and run back to Washington. I had to talk to Tanya. She loved Edward, I knew that, but maybe she still loved me too, she'd _told _me she loved me. Maybe she'd just gone a little bit crazy and was now coming back to her senses, maybe it had been a temporary lapse. If I was going to leave her alone, I had to hear absolutely, from her lips, that she wanted me to.

"Excuse me," I said, brushing past Rosalie. "I'm going to go talk to Tanya, if that's all right with you."

"It's _not _all right with me," Rosalie said, but she let me go. That didn't really bode well—because if she wasn't stopping me, it was because she thought she didn't have to.

I got back to Tanya and Edward in the birches, and this time I wasn't going to hide and watch. I stormed right in, with an abruptness and unsubtlety that broke them apart like marbles. Edward looked apologetic and a little embarrassed, Tanya just looked—in pain. Torn open to the bone. Her head came up and she gave me a look that both made me want to hug her, right now, this instant, and warned that if I did I might not have all my limbs when I stepped away. It was that wildness, it was back and in full flame and I don't know if I could have touched her without scorching and burning.

"I'm sorry," Edward said. I knew he knew everything, and so I knew what he meant. I wasn't sure whether I forgave him. I wasn't sure whether he really knew what he'd done by just being here, by coming here and holding her hands. He had broken us to pieces.

I wasn't sure sorry was enough. I said nothing. He had the grace to know when he wasn't wanted, even if it was a little late, and he slipped away with all the silence and silent apology he could manage.

I wasn't sure I forgave him for the way that Tanya was looking at me now—there was an apology in her eyes, too, but it was deep in there and layered under anger and hurt, almost impossible to see. "Tanya," I said.

"I don't," she said, words coming with difficulty from behind her teeth, "want to talk right now."

"Tanya." It was strange to discover that I had nothing else to say.

Her shoulders were moving up and down, her body was shuddering with the motion of them, and it took me awhile to figure out what was happening. You see, usually when people cry, there are tears. Tanya didn't have any tears. She cried without them, huge sobs that shook her as she tried to suppress them. It looked like it hurt.

I forgot about the danger and crossed the clearing in two steps, wrapping my arms around her. She pushed me away almost instantly, not hard enough to hurt me but she wanted me _away, _she wanted out of my arms. "Embry, not right now," she said. "Seriously."

"Okay," I said, trying to be understanding, trying to be calm. "Then when?"

"I don't know," she said bluntly. "I'm—confused."

"What are you confused about?" I said, some of the frustration slipping through. "I thought you said you loved me."

"That's not the _point, _Embry."

"How is that not the point? If you love me, then you want to be with me."

"You know what, Embry? I loved Edward too, and we all saw how that worked out. Stop thinking that everything is so _simple._"

"This is simple," I existed. "It's simple. You just have to decide if you want to be with me, or if you want to spend your entire life pining after Edward, who does _not _love you and is never going to be with you!"

It was too much. I hated it the moment it got out of my mouth, and I wished not to have said it. I saw her react like I'd slapped her, saying things that she never wanted to hear from anyone and shouldn't have heard from me. Not from me. I was supposed to love her, and I was not supposed to hurt her at all.

"You are such a child," she said coldly, backing away. "You're such a child."

Now it was my turn to react, I felt like she had hit me back. Unlike her, I knew _exactly _what that felt like, we hadn't had the best start to our relationship. And it looked like we weren't going to have the best end, either.

"Okay," I said, holding my hands up. I wasn't going to bug her. I wasn't going to stalk her. I wasn't going to be that guy. "I love you. You know where I'll be."

And in direct opposition to about eighty percent of my screaming instincts, I turned and I left.

---

Alaska wasn't like Washington. I mean, yeah, okay, state the obvious, but it had been a problem. I'd been running the woods of the Washington coast for years now, I knew the patterns of the roots and the breaks in the trees. I knew which places I hated and which places I liked, which places were tricky and which places I could go to when I wanted to be alone. Everything was just so—thick here, so tightly packed. There weren't really clearings here like there were in Washington, and you couldn't exactly just sit in the middle of a bunch of trees and cry. It wasn't the same.

Not that I was going to cry. Because I wasn't. In some ways, being a teenage boy was a lot like being a vampire, and in this way it definitely was. No crying allowed, even when nobody was around to make fun of you. Tears would melt you like the Wicked Witch of the West. I just—needed to be alone. I'd had another talk with the Council, and that always left me feeling a little drained. We'd talked some more about my possible abdication, and how to maybe get Luke to abdicate as well. Turns out that Caleb was my second cousin, and I couldn't think of a better Alpha, I honestly couldn't. The Council certainly seemed to be happy with the idea, but it really wasn't as easy as all that. Luke was not going to go down quietly.

My helpful suggestion that maybe we should just kill him had not met with a lot of support. At least I was _trying _to solve the problem, though granted it might have had something to do with the day I'd had.

It wasn't night yet, so there was no reason for me to go wolf, there would be nobody there—I found a clearing soon enough to stay human, just a short walk outside Paskiak but away from the glacier. Entirely the other direction. It had been three hours and she hadn't come, she hadn't found me, she hadn't come to see me. This was the first chance I'd had to get away.

I found a spot that didn't seem too choked with trees, a hollow in the middle of a group of them, circled so close that they were growing into each other like they had a dozen arms, all wrapped around. This was great. This was the place I needed.

There was a tree down that looked recent, probably couldn't handle the weight of the snow. Some things just weren't strong enough. I sat down on it and leaned over, put my head in my hands, and closed my eyes.

There. Life made much more sense if I couldn't see anything. Just one less thing to worry about. Of course, if I had my eyes closed I couldn't see anyone coming, and it was a problem. I didn't see Kira until she tapped me on the shoulder.

I sat up so fast I almost knocked her out. "What? I'm not doing anything. I'm not doing anything."

"I thought I heard someone out here," she said, ignoring my spazzing. "Everyone thought you were out with your girlfriend. I mean, you just kind of _left._"

"No," I said wryly. "I am definitely not out with my girlfriend."

"Uh oh, I know that voice," she said, sitting down next to me on the tree trunk. "What happened?"

"Old boyfriend came back into town," I oversimplified. "She doesn't want anything to do with me anymore." Not crying, not crying, not crying. Absolutely not manly, it was not going to happen.

"Wow, really, just like that?" she said, reaching a hand over to rub me on the back. "You guys were so cute…"

"We _were, _you know? We _were _cute. We were _perfect._"

"So what are you going to do?" she wanted to know. Because Kira was the kind of girl who thought that there was something you could do.

"I don't know. Wait for her to come to her senses, or sit out places like this for the rest of my life and eventually die alone," I guessed. Don't cry, don't cry.

We sat there in silence for a minute, thinking uncomfortable thoughts about dying alone. "Hey, this might be a bad time," she said tentatively. "But I came to tell you something. We set the funeral date for your dad. He's going to be buried tomorrow. In the morning, probably. Sorry."

She saw the look on my face, and again she caught its meaning, and knew what to do. She got up and left me, and the instant she was gone I leaned over, put my head in my hands, and cried.


	30. Chapter 30

I hadn't been back to my father's house since the day he died. It wasn't like I was avoiding it, necessarily—I hadn't even known him long enough to have memories of him there—but it was more that Luke was still living there, and Luke was not my favorite person right now. We'd been back long enough that everyone had been able to tap into his memories of Kenai's death—nobody thought it was my fault anymore. Well, nobody except Luke. I'd been sleeping at Kira's house.

I hadn't seen Shila since the attack, and I wasn't sure how she was going to react to me now. Either she was going to want to hug me and feel sorry for me because my father was dead—she'd been hugging me since I got here, after all—or she was going to want to kill me because of what I'd done to Luke. She, after all, wasn't tapped in to the pack thoughts. So I didn't just walk into the house—I knocked.

I wouldn't even be coming back here at all, except that I needed something from her—I needed clothes. I'd tried borrowing from a couple other people, but not even Caleb had clothes big enough to fit me. Sweatshirts and things had worked all right, but now I had to get ready for the funeral. I needed a suit.

Shila opened the door, not Luke, and at least it was her even if she was frowning. Well, not even frowning, exactly—she just had that icy, neutral non-expression that people got when they were trying to be polite but didn't feel like it. It looked strange on her sweet, motherly face, but she was giving it a good try anyway.

"Oh," she said. "Hello, Embry."

"Hi," I said nervously. "Um. I need to borrow some—clothes. For the funeral."

She was already dressed, wearing a black ruffled dress and a headband—and now that I looked closer at her, I could see the shadows bruising under her eyes, the smears in her mascara where she'd tried to repair it after crying. Suddenly I felt bad for not remembering that this was worse for her—that it was worse for her than _anyone, _I'd thought it was bad for me, but I'd only known him for five days. I tried to think about how I would feel if Tanya died.

"That's fine," she said, in the tone of a person who actually wanted to say _that's horrible. Play in traffic and die. _"Come on in. The bedroom is just down the hall, on the right. Help yourself."

"Okay," I said and slipped in under her frosty gaze.

I was watching out for Luke, who I felt was the kind of person who jumped out from behind corners. I made it almost all the way to the master bedroom without running into him, but no such luck. I turned into the hallway, and wham. There he was. I tried to keep myself from backing up too quickly, I didn't want to spook him. Who knew what he'd do if I moved too fast.

"Hey, Luke," I said, because nothing else was happening, we were just staring at each other.

"Embry." Was that the first time he'd said my name? I didn't know he even knew it.

"Um," I said. "Yep. Hi. I guess I'll see you at the funeral?" I went for it—I dove straight into the space to the side of him, seeing if I could make it through. I couldn't. He turned on me the minute I tried to get past, not attacking, just blocking me. I wasn't sure how to react to this, but again I didn't want any sudden movements. I stayed there, with one hand braced on the wall, and said, "What do you want?"

His head dropped and his feet shifted back, and I felt that he had something to say. Probably something horrible. I tried to push past him again and this time I was successful, slipping along the wall where he wasn't blocking me. He turned fast and caught my arm, and I froze—he was looking at me now, and he had the same eyes as Kenai, black black black.

"Why didn't you stop me?' he said, and there was no question what he was talking about. Now that I was looking at them, I could see the heaviness in his eyes, the death of his father in there, near the back but like neon. I thought about what McKenna had said. Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder. Dangerous; severe. "Why didn't you stop me?"

I pulled away carefully, keeping my eyes locked on his, pulling back. "I tried," I said, and I left him. He stood there in the hall after me.

I felt completely like an intruder in Kenai and Shila's room—I could hardly make myself turn on the lights. Nothing had been touched, nothing that was Kenai's. His boots were still sitting by the bed, his book was still open on the nightstand. It was like one of those museum memorial rooms with everything set up perfectly to pretend someone lived there, roped off so no one could touch. I almost tiptoed.

The house wasn't all that big, but it was big considering there were only three people in it. And my mother had told me a long time ago that every woman needed a walk-in closet. Shila certainly had hers, and it was big enough for a whole other room. I had to search to find Kenai's clothes, one rack of them at the back of the closet. I was hoping he _had _a suit—they _were_ on a reservation in the middle of Alaska. I shouldn't have worried—a woman with this many clothes was going to make sureher husband had one good suit.

It was black, and it had a vest, and it looked hardly worn. It would probably be a little too big for me—but at least it wouldn't be too small. I couldn't believe that I was wearing my dad's suit to my dad's funeral, but if there was a heaven and he was allowed to look out of it, I'm sure he would think it was okay. And if there wasn't a heaven then he couldn't get mad at me anyway.

I wandered out of the closet as I put on his tie—the closet was _scary, _there were a _lot _of shoes—still trying not to touch anything, still feeling something like what a ghost must feel. I walked over to the full-length mirror and gave myself a critical once-over. I was surprised how well it fit, actually—not as much space in the shoulders as there had been last week. That was the way it happened for us sometimes, sudden growth spurts when we didn't expect them, but I hadn't really thought I had anymore growing to do. I was already the biggest in our pack, I hadn't been at all sure about any more growth spurts. I hadn't been expecting to fit into Kenai's suit.

His desk stood right beside the mirror, and it wasn't like I was actively snooping through it, but as I stood looking in the mirror something caught my eyes. There wasn't a person in the world who could walk past a picture of themselves without looking, and it _was _a picture of me. I moved closer and found that the picture was familiar—that dorky graduation picture that they make everyone take, red polyester and unnatural smiles. It was propped up on his desk, right on the top shelf of it next to his framed pictures of Luke and Shila.

I picked it up to look at it, and behind it was his calendar—set on May. He'd died on the second day of May but he'd still found time to change it, and I wondered if anyone would change it when it was June. Just out of habit, I glanced at May 15th, my birthday—and to my shock, there was something penciled in there. I put my hand under the calendar and tipped it forward to look at the writing, and that was what it said. _Embry's Birthday (18). _

I just stood there looking at it for a minute, almost not sure of I was seeing. It was a two-year calendar so I flipped back in it, finding May of last year, sliding my finger down to the 15th—_Embry's Birthday (17). _

He had my birthday marked. He knew my birthday and he'd been marking it, he had known who I was, how old I was, and every year he'd written it on May 15th.

I tore the May page off the calendar, folded it up, and put it in my pocket.

---

Kira wasn't related to Kenai. A lot of people were related to him, I had found, a lot of people were related to me. It was a small reservation. But not Kira. She wasn't related to him at all.

But she was the one who could sing.

_Amazing grace, how sweet the sound/_

_That saved a wretch like me/_

_I once was lost, but now am found/_

_Was blind, but now I see/_

She sang the way that children sang, clarity but no awareness, opened her mouth and music came out. She stood there right in front of the coffin in her black dress and winter coat, hands caught together in front of her, looking at nobody and singing. Her voice was like crystal caves and mica, salt crystals, fragile and sharp and glittering. It seemed that it went straight into me and left note-shaped holes on the other side.

_Through many dangers, toils, and snares/_

_We have already come/_

_Twas grace that brought us safe thus far/_

_And grace will lead us home/_

I was trying to keep it together. I had my arms wrapped around my chest as if something might happen if I let go, and if I moved I might break into pieces. I kept myself from looking at the coffin. It was a closed coffin—nobody wanted to be reminded of what Kenai had died of, not today—but I still couldn't bring myself to look at it, not without remembering that my dad was inside it and they were about to put him in the ground.

Kira finished singing and left a silence that threatened to swallow us whole. We stood staring at each other, not daring to move, the whole village gathered in black like crows grouping around carrion. All in black, standing in the snow, evergreens behind us. We made quite a picture.

"Embry," Speaker said out of nowhere, and my head snapped up hard enough to give me whiplash. I'd spent this whole funeral trying to fade into the background, what was he doing calling me out? "Would you like to say a few words?"

I felt my eyes get as wide as dinner plates, every joint freezing like I was turning to stone. Maybe turned that way by the gazes of the mourners, all suddenly fixed on me. It was enough to make me keel over dead right on the spot, I can tell you that. Did I want to _say _a few words? No! No, I didn't! I was an outsider here, didn't matter whose son I was, didn't matter if I was _Alpha, _didn't _matter. _I'd known him for five days. I did not want to say a few words.

I was saved by the wind—it changed direction suddenly and swept past us, ruffling black chiffon and flower petals, and it brought with it the smell of old oak wood. My heart jumped up my throat, and I turned and saw Sam and Jacob walking out of the woods.

I hadn't noticed, really, how well I fit here, how the Alaska blood made me fit here like a piece of the landscape, in with the trees and mountains. The way my bones ran parallel to them. Sam and Jacob—well, they didn't fit. Not the way I did. I could spot them ten feet away, and did, and I'd never seen a more beautiful thing in my life.

I moved the moment I saw them—I walked quickly toward them, then ran. I crossed the ground between us, running nearly fully speed when I made it to Jacob, crashing into him, and he grabbed me and pulled me into a hug.

Something inside me broke, something that I'd thought was essential for survival but not anymore, not now that they were here, my Alpha and my best friend, they were _here, _and my father was in a coffin ten feet away. I wrapped my arms around Jacob's neck and buried my face in his shoulder, and I did not let go.

"It's okay," Jacob was saying, hugging me tight enough that it was hard to breathe, but that didn't seem to matter very much. "Everything's fine, Embry. It's going to be fine. It's going to be okay."


	31. Chapter 31

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry, I had a lot of trouble with this chapter. I swear I didn't mean to make y'all wait so long. Please forgive me. Love, princesswingnut.

---

Obviously, I was not a fan of the Volturi. They were vampires—powerful, dangerous vampires, not to mention obnoxious ones. I hadn't actually met them, but I had heard the stories—the creepy palace, the long hair, the robed guards. Lately Bella and the Cullens had been freaking out about them coming after Bella, so I had heard _allll _about them. There was no doubt about it: they were evil.

But in a way, they seemed kind of useful. I mean, at least they were some sort of control—they kept things from getting out of hand. As werewolves, we had nothing like that. There weren't enough of us, we hadn't been around long enough, we didn't have that kind of infrastructure. When something went wrong, there wasn't a looming all-powerful ruling class to step in and take care of it.

The closest we had was Sam. Of course, he was still only nineteen and he was from a different pack—I'd already caught a couple of looks of resentment of what-are-you-doing-here-we-can-handle-this-ourselves, but the reality was that Paskiak had a problem. We needed _all _our heads together, and the more heads the better. Sam and Jacob were the first wave—Sam because he was really good at solving problems, and Jacob because he was the one who'd been through this before. Billy Black and Sue Clearwater were coming up as well, but they didn't have the option of four legs. They would be here as soon as their plane landed, and if I knew Billy, he would bring with him some serious gravitas.

Currently, Sam was trying to convince them that Luke needed to be moved to a mental hospital. Not only was this way, way overdue, but it would take care of our problem as well. Turned out that if he moved out of state for a significant period of time, the Alpha role would naturally pass to the next person—Sam had discovered this when he'd gone on vacation to Florida two years ago. Now all we had to do is convince Shila—and then maybe call a couple of Marines to take Luke away, or something. Though considering what he'd told me this morning, maybe it wouldn't be as hard as I thought. In some ways, Luke seemed ready to go.

Now that Sam and Jacob were here, most of my problems seemed solved—or at least, solvable in the near future. It was a huge weight off my mind, it was ten less things that I had to worry about. But in some ways, that was kind of a bad thing—because if I wasn't stressing over all those problems, the only thing I had to stress about was Tanya.

And so I did. I stood out in Kira's yard and played catch with her, tossing the softball back and forth. Catch was easy with werewolf instincts—I could do it on autopilot while worrying if Tanya would ever come back. I wasn't going to go after her. I was telling myself that over and over even thought there was a good chance it wasn't true. I _wanted _to go after her. I wanted to find her and grab her hands the way that Edward had—I wanted to beg her. I wanted to tell her that I couldn't live without her, that it was okay if we weren't lovers, I would be whatever she needed, I would be her best friend, I would be her bodyguard, I would never touch her again unless she asked me to.

I wasn't at that point yet. I was still hanging on to the last scraps of my dignity, and I was hanging onto the idea that if I went to her now, there was a chance she would kill me. She was just—well, she was a vampire again, if that made any sense. I felt like the more I'd been with her, the more human she'd gotten, the nicer and calmer she'd gotten, but that one touch of Edward had reversed it all, instant trauma. If I went to her now, who knows what she might do to me. So I played catch with Kira instead and waited for my problems to be solved.

It turned out to be a very eventful game of catch. As we stood there tossing the softball back and forth, not talking at all, just the thump of the ball back and forth getting evener and evener, more rhythmic—Edward Cullen walked out of the woods.

My first instinct was to kill him. First of all, because he was a vampire—I don't know how the patrols had let him through, but it was possible they were a little disorganized with all that had been going on lately. I know _I _hadn't ordered any patrols, and I was the Alpha. He shouldn't have been here at all. Also, my homicidal instincts had a little bit to do with what had been going on yesterday, with him standing in the birches with my Tanya and ruining my life, and all. But I couldn't kill him. It wasn't his fault. That would be uncalled for.

Kira wasn't a werewolf by any means—there didn't seem to be any girl werewolves here either—but I swear she snarled when she saw Edward, pulling the glove off as her hands went to fists. I wouldn't be surprised if she attacked him right there, werewolf or no "What do you want?" I asked him quickly, before people could get out of control. Including me. Okay, mostly me.

He looked uncomfortable—I had never seen him look uncomfortable before. Edward Cullen was a glass lake, he didn't mess things up, he didn't lose control. "I was just coming to tell you that I'm leaving," he said, "and that I'm sorry."

"You shouldn't have been here at all," I said. Usually I was very nice and forgiving about things, but I really hadn't gotten much sleep, and Tanya didn't love me, and I just wasn't feeling all that forgiving. "I don't know if you know what you've done here."

"I know about you and Tanya," he said, flicking those hawk-gold eyes down to the ground. "I didn't know, Embry. I had no idea. When Rosalie asked me to come up, I didn't…I'm very sorry for what I've caused here. I want you to know that I told Tanya she should forget about me."

I knew this wasn't his fault—I _knew _it, it was Rosalie's fault if anyone, and maybe mine. But he was right here and he was so damn perfect-looking, smart and nice and with gold eyes and copper hair. How could she _not _love him?

It occurred to me suddenly that I might have self-confidence issues.

"Who's this?" Kira said, glaring at Edward from behind me. Kira didn't really have much werewolf-vampire bias, she seemed to have been born without it the way that some people were. But she had bias against people who got in the way of romance. "Is this the old boyfriend?"

"Oh," I said, remembering the conversation we'd had earlier. I had pretty much simplified it down to that, yeah. "Yes. Sort of."

I suppose I should have seen it coming—she still had the softball in her hand, and she'd heard kind of a weird version of the story in which Edward _was _the bad guy. She threw the softball at his head.

Now, it would have been upsetting if she'd broken his head open and he'd died or something—she did have a good arm—but things like that didn't happen to vampires. It did get rid of him pretty quickly, though, I had to give her that. He snatched the ball out of the air and held it at his head, smiling in that way that wasn't real smiling at all. "Okay, he said wryly, "I understand. I'm not welcome here."

"No," Kira said, looking around for something else to throw. "You're not. Stop ruining everyone's life."

"Kira!" I said.

"No, it's all right," he said. "I'm leaving. But just so you know, Embry—she loves you."

I hardly had a chance to react to this at all—because hardly thirty seconds after he had faded back into the woods, someone else came out of them after him. Bright red-blonde hair like the first tongues of a fire, legs for miles, and eyes toned down to dark gold with hunger. It was Tanya, and she hadn't calmed down.

"Edward was here," she said. It wasn't a question.

"He was." It was all I could manage. The sight of her stuck me to the ground and paralyzed me, lightning-struck me. Even after everything she'd said, everything we'd been through, she still had the power to basically destroy my life just by showing up on my doorstep. "He's gone."

We stared at each other for a minute, not daring to look away, like exes who've met in a supermarket and can't get any closer because of the memories stuck between them. She still loved me. Edward had said she still loved me.

Behind me, Kira cleared her throat, jarring us out of our staredown. "Kira," I said woodenly. "This is Tanya. Tanya, this is my friend Kira."

"Oh, right," she said confidently. "Tanya. You guys are in love."

I winced and ducked my head, and Tanya made a small noise. I wasn't entirely sure what kind of noise it was. "Embry, I came to tell you that we can't see each other anymore."

Well. That was a far cry from "you guys are in love", wasn't it? "I don't think we're seeing each other now," I said blankly. Possibly I was going into shock. I didn't seemed to be screaming or yelling or begging at all, so very possibly.

"My sisters sat me down this morning," she said. "They told me I can't see you. They said I can't live with them anymore unless I don't see you, they said they won't even talk to me."

"Paskiak told me the same thing," I argued, starting to show a few more signs of life. "Everyone told me the same thing. _I _dealt with it, Tanya, because I loved you more than _anything _they could say. They couldn't bully me into not seeing you."

"Well, maybe I don't love you as much as you love me," she said bluntly. I wondered if she'd really come here for me or if she was chasing after Edward. I wondered if she would go after him when I was gone. "Embry, how could you _think _this was going to work?"

"Tanya," Kira said steadily, the only reasonable one anymore even if her ideas were—perhaps a bit oversimplified. "You guys are meant to be together. You love each other."

"I'm sorry, _who _are you again?"

"Tanya," I said, in place of a thousand other things.

"Embry, please don't make this harder than it already is."

"You need him," Kira pressed. "You're going to go crazy without him."

She pressed her palms to her temples quickly, then pulled them away, smoothing her hair where she'd touched it. "I can't do this," she said. "I can't do this. Don't come looking for me again, Embry."

---

Kira chased after me as I stormed the castle, trying to convince me that my world hadn't actually crashed down around my ears when I knew that actually it really had. I wasn't stupid. This was just it for me, and I never should have expected anything else.

"She _loves _you," Kira insisted. "She loves you! Are you blind? Did you see the way she was looking at you?"

"Like I was a bug? Like she hated me?" I said. "Yeah, I saw that, Kira."

"_No,_" she said. "She _loves _you. She _has _to love you. You imprinted on her! Even the ex-boyfriend said she loves you!"

"Just because she loves me," I stopped just for a second, just to explain, "doesn't mean she has to like me."

I burst into the Council room with the door-slamming energy of a grounded teenager. Things were going so _fast, _but it was the kind of fast like when you trip at the top of a hill. I'd finally hit my limit. This was rock bottom.

"This is rock bottom," I told the assembled Council members.

"Hey, Luke says he's not stepping down and he wants to challenge you to fight for Alpha," said Sam. "And Caleb said he's not going to cease hostilities with the coven if _he _becomes Alpha. He says that if they stop aggression that the coven will totally destroy them. He also said that this was the way it's always been done."

"I was wrong," I said. "Here's an even lower place."

"So what do you think?" Speaker asked. "Are you willing to fight Luke? We can't risk him becoming Alpha."

"Hell no I will not fight Luke," I said as politely as I could manage. "You guys need to put your foot down. You need to _stop _him from being himself. You should have done it years ago. And as for Caleb, tell him to suck it up and that hate is unhealthy. Call Carlisle and Esme, ask them to come up, no one can resist Carlisle and Esme. They are just going to have to learn to live with each other. And I," I said. "I am going home."


	32. Chapter 32

Usually, it wasn't that hard to convince me of things. I didn't usually care enough to have that kind of strong opinion, I wasn't going to sit and argue with Quil or yell at Leah. I was usually pretty much just going to fold.

Not this time. This time, I was not backing down. I wanted to leave and I was _going _to leave, and nobody was going to convince me otherwise. I think that was really confusing for them. Especially Jacob and Sam seemed to be having a hard time with my new stubbornness, unable to understand why they couldn't talk me out of leaving.

Tanya was the sticking point. I'd found in her all the conviction that I'd ever been missing, and unfortunately that worked both ways. She didn't want me, she didn't love me, and she wanted me to leave. Therefore I was going to leave. It was just that simple—and I was out of here.

I had no luggage to pack, I hadn't brought anything with me. I had blown into this place on anger and discovery, I'd been here only, what, two weeks, two and a half? Every day I'd been here had been full of little dramas, small explosions that seemed to have been embedded like land mines along the way. This was just the last explosion, and that was the one that blew me back out again. I was done, I was out. She didn't love me.

Kira was the only one who didn't give up. I had weathered the initial explosion after I'd made my announcement, everyone telling me how stupid of an idea this was and that I shouldn't leave, that they needed me, that it was good for me to be here. Then as I'd stood there patiently and knocked down every one of their arguments, taking time to explain exactly why I was going to leave and why I needed to, they'd gotten quieter and quieter, realizing that maybe this was a knee-jerk reaction but it was a good one.

Sam and Jacob didn't like Tanya. They somewhat accepted her by now, but they didn't like her, they'd never liked her and they'd never wanted me to be with her. So if I wanted to give up on her and leave her, then they didn't so much have a problem with that. The Council had been a little harder to convince, because however much they resented me I was still their Alpha for now, and if I left that would force their hand on the Luke issue. They would have to stop sitting around discussing what to do about it and do what they knew they had to—get Luke out of here and get him help. Sucked for them. They should have done it years ago. Once I made it clear that I didn't care how hard it was going to be, they shut up too.

Kira never shut up. It was because she was fourteen, and it was because she actually liked Tanya, and because it seemed very personally important to her that Tanya and I be together. Something about me leaving was absolutely crushing her dreams, and when I looked back at her I could swear she was almost in tears.

"Embry," she said, her eyes just barely glittering so I couldn't be sure. She was out here in her snow boots and parka, I was out here in bare feet, I would have shifted ten minutes ago if it wasn't for her. I couldn't seem to tell her absolutely no, not with her this close to crying, and I couldn't tell her no because the things she was saying were still in my head at the back somewhere. "_You can't leave. _It's going to kill her, it's going to kill you, you're _imprinted _on her, Embry! Don't you understand that there's no running away anymore?"

"She doesn't love me, Kira," I argued, and kept walking. Was I going to walk all the way to Washington as a human, with Kira trailing behind me telling me not to go? I could really see it happening.

"She _does _love you," Kira insisted. "She loves you! She's crazy about you! She's just _scared—_she's scared the way _you're _scared, and you're _both _running away! One of you has to stop running, and you know what? It's probably going to have to be you!"

"I can't," I told her, waving a hand in the air. "It's too late. I can't. I just want to go home."

She grabbed my wrist and turned me, and she was stronger than I expected. "Give it another chance," she said breathlessly, looking at me so that I knew suddenly it was the last time she was going to ask. "This is your chance to be happy, right here, Embry. She's what you've been given. Just try again, okay? Just give it one more try."

I opened my mouth to say—something—probably no. Probably that I did love Tanya and she was—so fantastic, but I had had it _up to here _and I wanted to be in my own bed with the covers pulled over my head. I was exhausted. I hadn't had a full night of sleep in weeks. I missed my mom. I was _done, _I was burned out. I was going home.

Or at least I thought I was. I was a little caught up in the argument with Kira, and yes, I was tired, but there was really no excuse for letting a vampire get that close. And she _did _get that close, she walked right up behind me—I caught the sharpness at the last minute, the angry vampire scent flooding over me as I turned and caught her there. Tanya had taken my edge off in this way, I guess you could say she'd actually been dangerous for me if this was the way that I reacted to a vampire scent now. With a sort of tolerance, with a curiosity—turning to see whether it was her, and then when it wasn't, I appeared to be screwed.

It was Irina. Suddenly all the curiosity was gone, all the moping, all the anger. Everything funneled down to standing across from her and suddenly needing to get out of here alive. I hadn't seen her in more than a week, but I remembered her—the last time I'd seen her, she'd tried to kill me, and I remembered the feeling of her hands on my neck, her foot on my chest. Not really something that you forget.

I had been wondering where she'd been.

"Kira," I said, turning myself slowly so that I was blocking her, hoping she was smart enough to be running already. "Get out of here."

"Embry…" she said, sounding terrified, unsure. Needing to be told it was okay.

"_Kira!_ Get _out _of here, _go!_"

"She might as well stay," Irina purred. "This isn't going to take long."

"Hi there," I said, trying to distract her. "Where have you been? I missed you."

"Hmm," she said, stepping forward. "I don't know about the small talk. I think I'm actually just going to kill you."

We were both basically on the same page there—hate him/hate her, kill that person, we'd always pretty much been on that page. Unfortunately, she had two advantages over me. First of all, she didn't have to deal with a small, somewhat fragile and upsettingly immobile girl named Kira to worry about. Second, she had that whole…werewolf suppression thing on her side. I was not going to win this one.

As I braced myself to attack Irina—no defense like a good offense, right?—I felt Kira move behind me, that same kamikaze forward-motion instinct that had made her throw a softball at Edward earlier in the day. Only Edward would never hurt her. This situation was slightly different. I quickly rethought my attack-now plan and turned and grabbed Kira instead, catching her just as she went on the attack, throwing her out from between us just as Irina hit me. And let me tell you, it was a good thing I did. Because she hit me like I'd stepped onto the rails of a subway, and if I'd been human like Kira was I would have been dead on impact.

As it was, I was pretty much dead anyway. See, the problem with Alaska was that there were so many _trees _here. When you were hanging out in civilization, you usually had to worry about getting thrown into walls and furniture and things—and walls and furniture, while slightly more difficult to replace, didn't really hurt that much when you hit them. You could break them with your head. Trees didn't really—break, so much. Basically, you just hit them, and it hurt, and if your head hit them then you basically just black out.

Which was what happened. She hit me, I hit the tree, my head hit the tree, in exactly that order. And then everything shuttered around me and closed up and went absolutely black.


	33. Chapter 33

Listen. I didn't want to die. I was seventeen, and I didn't want to die. There had been a few times this last two weeks, though, when I had been pretty sure I was dead no matter _what _I wanted. It could be argued that most of it was my fault—vampires were dangerous, I'd been warned, I was technically supposed to stay away from them. When I didn't stay away from them, then I had to start getting worried about getting killed.

If I'd learned one thing from all of this, it was to be grateful I'd imprinted on Tanya. Yes, she had her problems, but at least she wasn't Irina. I used to have nightmares about things like that, falling in love with some kind of horrifying she-devil, and hey, it could have happened. What if I'd seen Irina first? What if things had been different? Was imprinting about timing, or about that specific person? It was a really good thing that I'd never have to find out.

Again, I was surprised to wake up. You have a fight with a vampire who hates you, she knocks you out, you just don't expect to be alive for very long afterward. The first time it had happened, Tanya had saved me. This time—well, she definitely hadn't.

But I wasn't dead. Which I didn't understand.

I opened my eyes to Irina—she was kneeling over me when I woke, her hands clasped together on her legs, expectant. "Oh good," she said. "You're awake."

My first instinct was to bolt. I couldn't do that, of course—because if I was still alive, there was a reason for it, and I had to figure out what that reason was. I had to know what she was up to. I sat up slowly, keeping my eyes on her in case she was about to try something. "Where's Kira?"

"Get up," she said, standing and nudging me with her boot. "We're going."

"Where's Kira?" I repeated. "What did you do with her?"

"What, the girl?" Irina said impatiently. "What about her? I killed her. Are you _listening _to me? I said get up." She grabbed my arm and dragged me to my feet, apparently not willing to wait.

And that was when I discovered that my leg was broken. I tried to put my weight on it and got an immediate stab of pain—I doubled over with my breath hissing through my teeth, my hands sliding down to it. A doctor would be nice, of course, but I didn't know how it had been broken and there wasn't a lot of chance of seeing a doctor to get it set—I was going to have to set it myself, I'd done it before, and it sucked but I was going to have to. I couldn't be out here, God knows where, with Irina and a broken leg both.

She grabbed my wrist with one hand and wrapped her other hand around my throat, tipping my head up with the casualness of a person who's forgotten what it's like to breathe. "Hey," she said. "There's a reason that's broken. You think I want you running off?"

"If you killed Kira," I told her—talking was difficult, but it seemed important to get this out. "I'm going to kill you. Really. I'll kill you."

"Shut up. I hate you." Very black-and-white with Irina. It was almost refreshing. Except that it was basically all black—her telling me that she was going to kill me and stuff. Real refreshing. "We are moving, now."

She let go of my throat and grabbed my wrist with both hands, but she wasn't expecting me to resist because she wasn't that kind of girl. She'd told me that she killed Kira, which I wasn't sure I believed, and that was the only reason I wasn't going for her neck right now. Either way I was out here with her, I couldn't see Denali anywhere, I didn't know what the hell was going on, and if there was somewhere she wanted to take me I could almost one hundred percent guarantee that it was somewhere I didn't want to go. I jerked back as she pulled forward, and broke her hold.

"God! You are so _annoying!_" she yelled, but she had _no _idea. As she turned back to grab me, I was ready for her—just because I had one broken leg did _not _mean I was out of the picture, I might be quiet but that didn't mean I was going to roll over and die. People made that mistake all the time.

She grabbed me, and I twisted my arm in her grip so that it was me grabbing her instead. This was surprising to her. It was also surprising when I put a hand on her shoulder as well and pulled her forward and flipped her right over my hip and into the nearest snowbank. And ran.

I'd learned that one from Jared. Well, not the running away part, but Jared had been one of those kids whose mom had put him in Tae Kwan Do when he was little, but unlike the rest of us he hadn't grown out of it when he turned eight. We usually didn't mess with those kind of human moves—they weren't much use as wolves, after all—but Jared had made sure we knew a couple. We'd never expected to run into a vampire who could make us have to use them.

I didn't make it all that far. She'd underestimated the broken leg, I think—it was already binding together, I don't think she expected me to be able to run at all. I could run. I just couldn't run _well. _

She caught me by the back of my collar, dragging my back so that the fabric choked off my breath. In a way, I guess it was good that she's stopped me from phasing to werewolf, because I hadn't destroyed my dad's sweatshirt. I'd probably die in it, which I suppose was poetic. Or something.

"Interesting," she fumed. "I didn't know you healed _that _fast. I'll have to keep a closer eye on that." And she put her boot on her my leg and her hands on my arms and turned my broken leg into a double fracture.

"Why," I asked her through my teeth, with my hands on my leg trying to push the bone back under my skin, "won't you just kill me? Not that I want you to," I added. "Not that I'm encouraging that. But it just seemed like that was what you wanted—I thought you wanted to _kill _me, not set a new world record for rebreaking bones. Ow." Ow was an understatement. I wasn't about to tell her that my leg felt like someone had stabbed it full of rusty, red-hot butter knives, because that wasn't the kind of thing you said to your mortal enemy.

"I can do both," she said succinctly. "Come on, get up. We're moving."

"_Why_ are we moving?" I yelled. She wouldn't _answer _me. "Where are we _going?_"

"We're going to Washington, Embry," she told me. "That's what you wanted, right? That's what you were yelling at the girl, you want to go home?"

"Of course I do," I said, trying to stay balanced with my weight on just one foot. "I'm just not sure we have the same intentions in mind here."

"I doubt it," she drawled. "I still want to kill you and all that, I just have to be annoyingly complicated about it. Tanya told me I'm not allowed to kill you, and she seems very serious about it. So, I figure I pretend that you've decided to go home, and your plans coincided very well with mine, thank you for that. So I can't kill you on the spot—I wanted to, I couldn't. Tanya would know. I have to—show a little reserve."

"Must have been hard."

"It was hard," she sliced. "You killed my husband."

"You know, I would feel way more guilty about that if he wasn't a murdering scumbag," I pointed out. She gave me a look like she was thinking about breaking another bone. "You must have noticed. You must have known that he'd never be like you."

"So," she said loudly. "So, what I do is drag you down the coast a little ways, leave a clear trail, make it look like you just gave up and went home. She'll believe it. She was looking for a way to get rid of you, and I'll give it to her. She'll be glad when you're gone."

Now that hurt. The broken leg, sure, yeah, that was painful, but hearing that Tanya needed me gone? Ouch. And the worst part was, Irina might be right. Not about Tanya _wanting _me to leave, maybe, but that she would forget me after I was gone. If I died—if I got killed—well, I was half of the imprint, and I was the half that all the chains came from. I'd heard about it before, the way that the bonds could break. The only way to break them. She would forget about me if I died.

And then there was the idea that maybe Tanya forgetting about me was for the best.

You don't have a lot of time for angst in life-or-death situations. This was pretty much all the time I got. After that good angst-drenched minute or so, I had to focus instead on the fact that Irina seemed to be unbuckling my belt. This was unexpected.

"Hey, hey!" I yelled, trying to pull back, but she hooked her foot around the back of my broken leg and that was all the moving for me, I wasn't going anywhere. "What the—"

"Calm down," she said sourly, pulling my belt out of my jeans and looping it over her hand. "You really think I'd be slumming like Tanya? Please. Lucky for her she has no idea how _ridiculous _she looks, chasing after a _kid, _and a dog on top of that. Get over yourself."

She slid the belt around my neck and buckled it, pulling it neatly through on the word _dog, _perfect punctuation. I snatched the belt out of her hand, there was no _way _I was just going to let her stand here and smirk at me. I'd been planning to just stay cool here, wait for my chance to run, but the belt thing was just too much. "You _have _to be kidding," I snapped, my fingers going to the buckle.

She swept her foot under mine, tripping the tentative weight on my hurt leg, and I almost went over—caught only when she reclaimed the belt, jerking me forward so hard that my neck was going to have to be fixed by either a chiropractor or death. "I am _not _dealing with you running off every five seconds," she said severely. "Come on. The longer it takes to get to Washington, the more time I have to spend with _you._"

"You're not going to get away with this," I said, because it was something that probably had to be said. She was the evil captor, I was the—what? I was the something. I was the person who told her she wasn't going to get away with this. "I'm going to kill you."

"With what?" she said scornfully. "Your fingernails?"

Good point. I switched gears. "Kira will have told everyone in Paskiak by now. They'll come after me, and they'll tear you to shreds."

"I told you," she explained patiently, pulling on my new leash. "She's _dead. _I killed her. Get _over _it."

"They'll come after me anyway," I invented wholesale. "They'll know."

"Please," she said. "Shut up. We've got some ground to cover."


	34. Chapter 34

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well. I've just broken my all-time record for reviews. Also just broke 100 story alerts. I am…psyched. You guys have no idea how much I love you right now. You are the most attractive readers anyone has ever had, of that I am convinced. Oh! Also. As you can probably tell, this story is starting to wrap up, and after this I only have one more compass point to go: West. I'm still not sure who I want to write it about, so maybe y'all can help me decide. There's a poll up on my profile if you want to throw in your opinion—options so far are Carlisle, Rosalie, Benjamin (the element-manipulator guy), Chelsea (the Volturi girl who changes emotional bondings), and Laurent. If there's anyone else you want me to write about, message me and let me know! Otherwise, go vote so that I know what y'all want to hear. And thanks again! 333

---

As I understood it from Encyclopedia Britannica, there were basically two categories of murder: premeditated and crimes of passion. Premeditated murders were the cold-blooded ones, the ones that the murderer planned out, thought about, wore gloves to commit so that they didn't leave fingerprints. Juries usually didn't like those kind as much. Crimes of passion maybe you could sway them on—those are the kind that were based off a sudden love-related reasoning, like jealousy or heartbreak.

I had been wondering which category my murder would fall into. Not that Irina would be tried in court, or anything—no, the reason vampires walked around like they could get away with anything was because they mostly could. It was just that Irina wasn't much of a talker, and I didn't have anything else to think about. Okay, see, here was the dilemma: it had obviously been premeditated. I don't know how long it had taken her to figure this one out, but she had meditated on it at least a little, that was for sure.

Then again, it was also technically a crime of passion. I'd been a part of her husband's death, and that had made her angry, and extremely passionate about removing my head from my shoulders. I didn't know how to classify it.

Of course, it wasn't going to matter what the classification was if I was dead. I probably wouldn't care.

She'd broken my leg eight times. I couldn't help but think that couldn't be healthy. I mean, yes, I healed fast, but that might actually be working against me in this instance—if I didn't get help for that leg soon, it was going to be healing like a jigsaw puzzle put together by a three-year-old.

It did make for slower going, though, and we were barely moving as it is. I was _not _making things easier for her—I'd only actively attacked her a few more times, but I was definitely dragging my heels. She wanted to take me to Washington, and this morning I had wanted the same thing, but she wanted to take me there to kill me and therefore it was in my best interest to make sure that we didn't get there at all. I don't think we'd even made it to Canada, and it had taken her all day to get me this far. She'd even started talking about jumping on a bus, but I assume it would be difficult to explain a seventeen-year-old boy on a leash with a broken leg. Maybe she'd steal a car.

"Hey," I said. "I'm hungry." It had been ten minutes since I'd caused any sort of problem. Time to screw things up again. She ignored me. She was still annoyed from the last distraction, which was been me lighting her hair on fire. Don't even ask how I managed that one_. _"HEY," I said louder, and I stopped dead in my tracks despite the fact that it about snapped my neck to do it. "I'm _hungry!_"

"That's awesome!" she turned on me, looking ready to kill me on the spot. "I don't care!"

"I need food!" I yelled back at her (I'd discovered that mostly the only way to communicate with Irina was yelling). "Do you want me to die right here? I'm so sure Tanya would buy it if I disappeared halfway to Skagway, Alaska!"

"You're not going to _die,_" she said scornfully. "It's probably been five _hours _since you've eaten, you can go like—days."

"Three weeks," I corrected unnecessarily. "Up to three weeks."

"Three weeks," she said, throwing up a hand. "There we go. You can go ahead and starve."

I was thinking about trying something else—that hadn't stopped her for all that long—but suddenly I had something else to pay attention to. I told myself not to stop, she hadn't seemed to catch what I just had. I wondered how good a vampire sense of smell was, because she sure wasn't smelling this like I was. The smoked russet flavor of _someone _behind us, getting closer, and somebody who Irina was not going to like. I didn't know who it was, but this was _not _a vampire. Someone was coming for me.

She finally caught the scent a few steps after I did, and her head snapped around with her chin tipped up. She was too late—a wolf was suddenly right there in front of us, snarling, and I did not recognize the wolf. I thought I knew everyone on sight—and considering that I'd now met both packs in probably the whole world, there was no excuse for not recognizing this small, white wolf with gray patches like leopard spots down the ridge of its spine. That was something I would have remembered.

No chance to be a wolf around Irina, though—she turned, and her eyes narrowed, and in a few seconds, I was going to know who it was. The fur was disappearing in ripples across the wolf's legs and back, and it became clear almost immediately that those were _not _boy legs. My eyes popped open, and then as her black hair started to come back in and her eyes, I realized who it was and I looked _away. _I felt like I should stab my eyes out. I felt like I should have had a little _warning _here, but to fair I hadn't expected Kira, of all people, to show up here as a wolf.

Just as I was really considering pulling an Oedipus, though, someone cut straight in front of her, blocking her out, and it was a person who could distract me on a _dime. _Tanya.

I suppose I had expected to see her again. I'd expected to see her again in the way that I hadn't believed that Kira was dead—people had told me differently, multiple times, and I'd tried to convince myself of these things, but somehow they had never seemed to stick. I saw Tanya come out of nowhere and I was surprised, but I believed it. It was right.

She wasn't even looking at me, she hadn't even said anything, too busy draping her parka around Kira's shoulders. I wasn't sure about what I should do here, and Irina seemed to be feeling the same way. Just to be safe, she jerked me backwards and wrapped her hand around my neck, holding me so that if she'd had a gun it would have been pointed at my head. Neither of us were sure who was here for what—I mean, Tanya hadn't exactly run into my arms. For all I knew she was here out of some sense of obligation. I _did _tend to get myself into these things, and maybe she thought she had to get me back out.

Either way, my chances were looking up. I put my left foot slowly down, leaning my weight on the leg even though it wasn't more than halfway healed. Whatever was going to happen next, I wanted to be ready for it.

"Tanya," Irina said, and her voice was strange. She knew she was doing something she wasn't supposed to—she'd been caught. Even though she still didn't think what she was doing was wrong, she still knew Tanya's opinion on the subject. "What's with the little bitch?"

"Hey!" Kira objected, struggling to her feet, but she might just have to get used to that one. It was just too easy—you were a girl who changed into a dog. It was just too easy. I'd have to get her to Leah and see if there were any special girl-wolf tips to be shared, Kira just seemed a little—young. I guess that first change always did come from stressful circumstances, and this was about as stressful as it got. I was just glad she wasn't dead.

"Irina," said Tanya in a voice so flat that it had to be anger. Either that or boredom. Hopefully anger. "You have to be kidding me."

"I didn't want you to find out." Was that _regret _I heard in Irina's voice? I doubted it. It was probably just regret that she'd gotten caught.

"I _bet _you did," Tanya said, and then grabbed a handful of Irina's fish-blonde hair.

I got _out _of there. I'd seen a few chick fights in my time, and those had just been the normal human kind. I was not getting in the middle of this. Especially because Kira already had hold of my arm and pulling me out from between them the exact way I'd done it for her earlier. She _was _stronger, I'd thought I had felt it before and there was no mistaking it now—she was strong in the shocking way that Leah was. I mean, when the rest of us punched through walls and stuff, you _expected _it, we looked like the kind of guys who punched through walls. Leah had never looked like that—still soft somehow, still small, and Kira was smaller still. But feeling her fingers wrap around my arm, I had no doubt that she could punch through some walls.

"Hi!" she said, clearly still pumped full of adrenalin and the wonder of that first phasing, discovering that your idea of _you _was actually bigger than you thought it was, way bigger, like discovering a whole new secret wing of your house. "Hey! Are you okay? We got here as fast as we could. Caleb knows what happened now, he found out when I turned into a werewolf. He told your Sam and Jacob, they're on their way. He can read my _mind,_" she informed me, even though I knew already and so did she. It was just a whole new world, this werewolf thing, and I understood that smile on her face even if it was, technically, wildly inappropriate to the situation.

"Are you okay?" I asked, just in case.

"Oh jeez, I'm fine," she waved me away. "A little surprised, but I'll get over it. How are _you? _That leg looks terrible! Are you all right?"

"Kira," I said, looking at her in the light of a sudden new idea. "I think I need to introduce you to a guy named Seth Clearwater."

"Seth who?"

"Never mind," I said. We'd work that out later. "How did you—and why did you go to _Tanya?_"

"I didn't go to her, she was _there,_" Kira said, distracted by the fight. "She showed up right before I changed, she was really nice about it—hey, don't you think maybe we should help?"

A good idea in theory—I mean, here we were chatting it up when Tanya was fighting Irina to the death—but Tanya didn't seem to so much need our help. She threw Irina halfway across the clearing and then she showed up right in front of us, smiling like Kira despite the fact that there were three long scratches across her face.

"Embry," she said quickly—Irina was already getting up, behind her. "Hi." And she grabbed me and pulled me into a kiss.

We hadn't kissed since that first day on the glacier—we'd been touching, we'd been holding hands, but we hadn't kissed again. Not till now.

"You came back," I said breathlessly, clinging to her. "You came back. Why did you come back?"

"Because I love you," she said, and then as Irina leapt at her she turned slightly and grabbed her by the neck, not letting go of me with her other hand.

"Tanya," Irina snarled, still reaching for me but I was too far away. "You _can't _be serious."

"Oh, I'm serious," Tanya told her. "And you, Irina—you broke the rules. We told you not to mess with him, we told you not to _touch _him. How dare you."

"He's a _werewolf!_"

"And he is my bond," Tanya snapped back. "We _told _you, every one of us told you, he is _off limits. _I don't care if he's a three-headed serial killer, he's my _bond. _Even Kate told you to leave him alone, Irina!"

"I—can't," Irina choked.

Tanya threw her down, shaking her head in disgust. "You _can't_," she repeated. "All right. Fine. You made your choice. You need to leave, Irina."

"_Leave?_"

"You're dangerous," Tanya said coldly. "You're insane. We don't want you around anymore. If you come back, I'll kill you."

"Tanya—" Irina said, getting slowly back to her feet.

"I'm _serious, _Irina!" Tanya yelled. "Get out of here!"

She got out of there. I wasn't sure how permanently she got out there, but at least she was gone. I was no longer in danger of immediate death—that was, if I hadn't wildly misinterpreted Tanya's kiss. "Embry," she said again, turning back to me with that same "hello" tone, the same sunrise warmness. "Sorry about that. Did I already tell you that I love you?"

"I'm not sure you should," I said.

"Why?"

She had me there. "I don't know," I said, trying to articulate everything I'd been feeling for the last two weeks. "I'm just—Embry." Yeah, that was what I came up with. Really eloquent.

"Well, yes," she said. She didn't seem to see the problem with this.

"That's the point," I explained. "You shouldn't be with me. I'm nothing special."

"Don't be stupid," she said, and kissed me again.

And I didn't _feel _like a nothing. There was just a way that I felt that I was with her, a soaring scope of feeling and I felt like there was light coming out of my fingertips, out of the top of my head. She was the most beautiful woman in the world, she was the most incredible impossible angel painting, and she wanted _me._ And I did not feel like nothing.

"Hey Tanya?" I said, after I could breathe again.

"Yes?"

"Do you want to go to Prom with me?"

Behind us, Kira made a small noise like an elephant stepping on a mouse, and covered her mouth with her hands.

Tanya smiled that light-up smile, melting me, defrosting everything within ten feet. Sunrise. "Sure," she said. "I'd love to."


	35. Chapter 35

Here's what happened.

Tanya told me the story on the way back down to Washington—she called Rosalie and told her to come pick us up in her Porsche. I thought it was good payback for all the horrible things she'd done to us, having to sit there in the front seat and listen to us gush how much we loved each other for six hours. I could practically hear her grinding her teeth the whole way. But you know, I think even Rosalie was starting to get used to the idea of Tanya and me. It was just that Tanya looked so—happy. Tanya looked beautiful, she looked radiant, she looked luminous, she looked a whole thesaurus full of words that meant that she'd finally figured absolutely everything out.

She said that she'd gone after Edward. Of course she had, she'd been staring after him even when she was with _me, _of course she'd gone after him. But here was the thing: she'd chased after him, and caught him. He'd turned around and looked at her with tired ex-boyfriend eyes, wondering how else he could possibly say to her that it was not going to work out. And she'd grabbed his arm and looked into his eyes and called him Embry.

"You did what?" I sat up in the backseat, a grin breaking as I tried to imagine Edward's face.

"I called him Embry," she laughed. "I looked straight at him and I said your name. Your name came _straight _out of my mouth."

"And that's when you knew," I finished her story.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I always knew. Even when I told you I didn't love you, that was a lie. I was lying my head off. I always loved you, Embry, I had to—I guess I just had to wait till I _wanted_ to love you, too."

That made sense. I'd had similar feelings, just less drastic. Anyway, I didn't care, I really didn't, because as long as it worked out in the end it really didn't matter what went on in the middle at all. It had mattered at the time, it had mattered while it was happening, but an ending like this whited everything out like a spotlight, blew everything out of perspective altogether.

"So what did he say?" I asked. I still liked that mental image, Tanya standing across from Edward and realizing suddenly that he was not the one that she wanted. Not anymore.

"He told me to get the hell back to you," Tanya smiled, running one hand casually through the top of my hair. "And it's a good thing he did. You sure have a talent for getting yourself into trouble, dear."

"Yes, I'm very proud," I told her. "And I'm wondering why you look so gorgeous, considering all that's happened in the last twenty-four hours. What's your secret, Tanya?" And suddenly I had an invisible microphone in my hand—why not, she was prettier than any red-carpet celebrity _I'd _ever seen.

"Well, I recommend cursed immortality for the skin," she said, taking my invisible microphone in stride. Just one of the reasons why I loved her. "It really works wonders for spots and wrinkles, you'll never have a gray hair in your life! It's really something. Also I'd recommend true love, it's changed my life forever. I'd like to give a shoutout to Embry Call, the most wonderful werewolf boyfriend any girl could ask for."

In the front seat, Rosalie made gagging noises.

---

Tanya was wearing a full-length, strapless empire-waisted black dress with jet beading on the skirt and bodice. At least that was what she told me, and I'm repeating it because I know that kind of thing is important to girls. Pretty much I just thought it was a black dress—but she _did _look beautiful in it. Good thing we lived in a small town, or people would be trying to snatch her away for a modeling career. Yeah, seriously. She looked _that _beautiful.

I supposed I was lucky that she'd been changed at the age she had—even if she was, technically, almost a hundred years older than me, she _looked _like she was nineteen. Which meant it looked totally not illegal for me to be taking her to the Prom.

I actually had no idea where she'd gotten the dress. I mean, I know where she'd _gotten _it, she'd had Rosalie bring it down along with her toothbrush and a change of clothes and a few of my dad's old things. I just didn't know where she'd gotten _this _dress, it was the kind of thing you wore to the Oscars, not our Under the Sea construction-paper-and-crepe extravaganza. But whatever. Even if she wore torn jeans and flannel, she was still going to make everyone else look stupid tonight.

I was getting ready at my house, trying not to look too stupid myself, while Jacob and Quil argued about the correct way to tie a bowtie. Jacob had made it back in time for Prom, and I had oh-so-sneakily suggested that perhaps Seth should be sent to Alaska as his replacement. He hadn't made it up there yet, but I was waiting to hear back from his first meeting with Kira. I wanted to hear what happened the first time that he looked her in the eyes.

"Come here," I said to Quil, after watching him murder that bowtie for the tenth time. "You fold it _across, _then over. It's not like it's rocket science, man."

"Shut up," Jacob heckled. "Just because _some _of us don't have a girlfriend to explain these things…"

"Don't have a girlfriend is right," I shot back. "When are _you _going to imprint, anyway, Jake?"

"When I'm good and ready," Jacob said serenely. "Couldn't possibly do worse than the two of you, could I?"

Quil was taking Rebecca Newsome. He was doing it under extreme peer pressure, as we all knew he would rather be watching "Little Mermaid" with Claire, but we'd insisted that he have "the experience". Which meant, of course, that if we had to do it then he had to do it. What else were friends for?

I was wearing my dad's suit. I don't know why. It wasn't like I didn't have suits of my own, but honestly they probably wouldn't even fit me anymore. And I was kind of attached to this suit. Even if I grew out of it, I was keeping it. It was going to be hanging in the closet.

As I pulled the jacket on, I felt something crunch in the pocket—I put my hand in and I pulled out the calendar page. March 15 with my birthday written on it. I looked at it for a few moments—I had actually forgotten about it, and seeing it again was…hmm. It was hard. I walked across the room and pushpinned it to my bulletin board.

"Hey, what's that?" Jacob asked me. Jacob was an observant guy.

"Oh," I said. "Um. Nothing." I would tell them the whole story later—there wasn't a lot that I didn't eventually tell Quil and Jacob—but this didn't seem like the time. No need to be the buzzkill, we were supposed to be having _fun _tonight.

They caught my look instantly, and they were good at interpreting my looks. "Okay," Jacob said briskly. "The limo's going to be here in fifteen minutes. You want to do my bowtie too, Embry?"

I grinned at him, half thank you and half God-I-missed-you-guys. "Sure."

Tanya was making the situation even more ridiculousness by sitting at my kitchen table in her Oscars dress, chatting with my mom about cuticles and corn muffin recipes. Of course they got along. Of course they did.

"Embry," my mom said as she spotted me walking down the stairs. "You look nice, honey! Did you know that Tanya was born in _Russia? _She was just telling me about it."

"Yeah, I did know that," I said, shooting Tanya a grin. I wasn't sure how much Tanya had told my mother about—what, exactly, she was, but whatever she'd told her my mom had liked. We were just going to have to play it by ear—make sure she absolutely adored Tanya first, because I don't think any mother was going to be crazy about her son dating a vampire.

I'd spent enough time with my mom since I got home that she wasn't jealous of Tanya anymore—so when Tanya stood up and my eyes went straight to her, she understood. I'd _seen _the dress—I just hadn't seen her in the dress, with makeup and hair done and four-inch heels. It was—stunning.

I could see my mom hiding a smile behind her hand. She definitely wasn't going to object to us, she was _happy _for me. I know she'd been worried about me not dating, being so weirdly paranoid about dating—well, she didn't have to worry anymore.

Tanya saw my look and smiled as well, doing a little spin for me as she headed my way. "What do you think?" she said.

"Isn't it obvious?" Jacob said as he followed me into the kitchen. Stepping in for me, there, because I was pretty sure my voice wasn't going to recover from her gorgeousness for—quite some time. It was possible I'd just gone permanently mute. "Close your mouth, Embry, you look stupid. The limo's here."

"Um, Embry?" Quil yelled from the front entryway. "The limo's not the only thing that's here."

The doorbell rang.

"Well?" I asked as I heard him open the door. "Who is it?"

"Hi Embry," I heard a familiar voice say, and Jill Keyes poked her head and shoulders in the door. "I—heard you were back. It's Jill."

I have to say, this was the first time I'd ever been glad to see her. Was it creepy that she'd showed up on my doorstep? Yes. Had it been creepy when she'd stalked me at the coffeeshop all year? Yes. But for the first time, it really wasn't something I had to worry about.

"Hey Tanya," I called back to the kitchen. "Can you come out here? There's someone that I want you to meet."


	36. Chapter 36

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Okay, I've got a lot of business to take care of before this last chapter. Yuck. I always hate it when these paragraphs at the beginning are so long. And of course here I am making them longer. So! First of all, it looks like Benjamin won the poll for "West", which is cool because once I started thinking about him I got some really neat ideas. I know a lot of y'all were pulling for Rosalie, though, so what I'll probably do is write a series of one-shots about her (Rosalie would have been tricky to do a full-arc story about anyway, she's kind of got her good ending already…) and then do my fourth compass point on Benjamin. Also, there seems to be a massive demand for a followup on Seth and Kira, so I'll write up an ending for them as well—maybe "Northwest", or something. Hopefully that will work for everyone :) especially and including me.

Anyway, keep an eye out for "West". It'll probably take me a couple weeks to regroup, hash out my ideas, and get my sleeping schedule back to normal :), but I'll start on it as soon as I can. Each of these fics has been a progressively better experience for me, and I attribute that all to you beautiful readers. Thank you for your support through all of these stories—if you didn't keep saying such lovely things, I doubt I would still be writing them. You guys are the best.

Okay, seriously. I do have a chapter for you. A thousand apologies for taking up HALF A PAGE with my rambling. Goodness gracious.

--

I wish I'd thought of this _earlier. _Well, not like I exactly could have pulled it off like this, because it required Tanya to show up and look really really hot, and regal, and terrifying. But maybe I could have played the whole I-have-a-girlfriend card for Jill earlier, because it sure did seem effective.

Tanya walked into the hallway, and Jill's jaw dropped. I mean it literally dropped—it fell open like it had come unhinged, and it stayed there. I didn't blame her. Tanya looked like a goddess—she looked like something you should paint, or sculpt, or worship, and not like someone who hung out in entryways.

"Jill," I said, trying not to be smug. That wouldn't be polite. "This is my girlfriend, Tanya."

Tanya swept forward a few steps, and I could see Jill actually pull away, eyes widening. "Hi," she said, with that cat smile. "I'm Tanya. And you are…?"

"I'm, um." She had nothing. "I'm Jill Keyes. I just wanted to see if Embry was home, it's, um—Prom, and I wondered if maybe…hmm. Yeah. I guess I'll just…go. Nice to see you, Embry."

She slunk out the door, shutting it quietly behind her as if we might not notice that she'd been here at all. We held it all in until she made it out of the house, but as soon as I turned and my eyes met Tanya's, we burst out laughing. The sound of it surprised me—I couldn't remember ever hearing her laugh. It sounded like glass birds. Glass ravens and robins.

---

The limo was tricky. Jacob and Quil's dates weren't werewolves, obviously, so they didn't know anything was going on at all, but Jacob and Quil themselves were having difficulty with the smell of Tanya in a confined space. It was going to take them all awhile to get used to her, but I had faith they'd be able to do it eventually. They'd already had practice with the Cullens these last few months—good thing that the treaty had been so flexible after the fight with Victoria, otherwise there would have been more problems than a limo that smelled like a vampire.

As it was, there was just a little squirming and some uncomfortable smalltalk—the other girls reacting to Tanya's unexpected hotness in the way that girls always did. But Tanya turned out to have a talent for putting people at ease when she felt like it, and she was determined to make this a good night for me. By the time we were done with dinner, they were chatting like old friends—though I doubted Tanya would ever talk to these girls after tonight. Quil didn't care about his date all that much, he'd basically just picked a name out of the yearbook—and Jacob didn't have all that great of taste in girls. I was the lucky one here tonight.

I couldn't keep my eyes off Tanya. I'd been tripping over things all night, chairs, staircases, the curb of the sidewalk as I got out of the limo. I was supposed to be helping her out like a gentleman, but she ended up having to catch the back of my jacket as I started to fall over, stepping out by herself and holding me up as well.

I could see kids starting to stream in through the gymnasium double doors, walking awkwardly in their high heels and tuxedos, not sure whether they should touch each other. Tanya came up beside me and slipped her arm through mine. "You ready for this?" she said.

Jacob and Quil and their dates were tumbling out of the limo behind us, chattering with excitement and nervous energy. Tanya and I, on the other hand, seemed to be trapped in a bubble of quiet, dramatic solemnity. We did not chatter. We just stood there and were in love for a little bit, while everyone else left glitter on the sidewalks and laughed at each other too loudly.

We finally started up the sidewalk ourselves, her arm in mine. I wasn't a particularly graceful person, but with her walking next to me like she was a queen and expected to be introduced at the top of the stairs by a royal herald—I managed. There was something about being with Tanya that dragged me up a few notches, that _demanded _I be better and didn't accept less. I was turning into something different than I was before. I hadn't known there was anymore room to grow, but here I was. Growing.

We made it to the open double doors, and then stopped. We didn't mean to, it just happened—like we'd hit a wall of sequins and polyester tablecloths. So this was Prom. It still looked like gym class, plus strobe lights and a kid with a laptop playing DJ. Girls were hiking up their chiffon skirts to dance with their dates like they were mad that the chiffon was in the way. A junior named Craig was spiking the Hawaiian punch.

Tanya turned to me, and slowly, slowly raised her eyebrows. I pulled her closer in to me, and raised my eyebrow back. And smiled.

"Want to get out of here?" I said.

She turned all the way to me. We were blocking the entrance entirely, and people were starting to walk up behind us, peering around us, wondering if we ever planned to move. "Yes."

I grabbed her hand, and she took off her heels, and we ran.

The promgoers scattered as we ran the straight at them, back up the sidewalk and past the surprised limo driver, and we did not stop till we hit the coast. We were surprised to see it, actually—I think we thought we'd run forever, even though her dress had gone muddy up the sides and caught by branches, and the cuffs of my dad's suit were worse. I think he would understand.

Alaska had been new and difficult to figure out, but this was _my _coast, and I knew where to go—I led her along the cliffs to a ledge, a long shale shelf that we dove from sometimes when we were really feeling like teenage boys. She pulled her dress up to her knees and sat down with her legs hanging over the edge. I sat down next to her and wrapped my arms around her waist, and we looked down at the water, at the stripes of moonlight running down the surface of it. The salt was collecting at the back of my throat already, I could feel it coming up from the waves shattering to pieces below us.

"So this is where you live," she said.

"Well, not here exactly," I grinned. "This is just a ledge. We go cliff-diving sometimes."

"Oh, do you?" she asked, leaning over to look at the water like she hadn't quite been aware of it before. "What is that, ten, fifteen feet?"

"I'd say about fifteen." It was nice to be young and totally indestructible. I wasn't afraid of heights and I wasn't afraid of the water. I wasn't even afraid of her anymore. She leaned back and pulled the clip out of her hair, and it fell down her back that same color that it always looked at night—cool gold candleflame. Nothing as boring as just plain blonde.

She was still looking at the water, and I was looking at her.

"Jump with me," she said.

I was surprised, but the answer was yes. The answer was always going to be the same—ever since I'd jumped out of Rosalie's car and run off toward Denali, and she'd hit me from the side and I'd rolled onto my back and looked right into her big gold eyes. Ever since then it was just always going to be yes. It was just her, that was the rest of my life—I could see it all the way out to the end, and it was just _her._ Just Tanya.

She stood up with her hand still in mine and pulled me up with her. I kicked my shoes off and left them on the side of the ledge. I would come back for them.

"One," she counted. Her hand was very cold in mine, and I locked my fingers in tighter. I wasn't going to lose her when we hit the water. "Two." I could see the waves crashing and snapping against the rocks, pounding into them as if it could bring them down. The ocean didn't look the way it looked in the daytime, blue where the sky reflected off it. It looked black. It was a long way down.

It really wasn't scaring me at all. "Three," she said.

And we jumped.


End file.
